Episode #3 - Starting the Right Company - An Entrepreneur’s Journey

Wells Burke is a serial technology entrepreneur. His recent venture, Rocket Partners, is a cloud-focused enterprise software development services company. Over the last 3 years, Rocket has grown to nearly 50 developers in 3 countries focusing on retail and healthcare Azure and AWS custom critical projects.

In 2010, Wells founded LIFT Retail, a point of sale (POS) connected digital shopper marketing platform. LIFT became the fastest growing digital ad network in the US scaling from 0 to 10,000 outlets in 3 years. After selling to Verifone in 2012, Wells spent three years building out Verifone's digital marketing properties and product managing Verifone’s $100MM global advertising network. Prior to LIFT, Wells founded Synthesis, a pioneer in the content management and electronic contracting space. Wells got his start at IBM where he helped launch some of the earliest interactive eBusiness initiatives for companies including Macy’s, Borders Books, Hertz Rental Car, and Bank of America.

Wells lives in Atlanta with his amazing wife, Kate, and three awesome kids Owen, Margaret, and Emily. He is an avid mountain biker, terrible golfer, and unapologetic cloud software development super-nerd. Wells is also a proud yellow jacket with a BS in computer science from Georgia Tech.

In our conversation, Wells shares his entrepreneur journey. It started in a booming dot-com economy, then went through a bust, another boom, and a bust again. All while starting businesses, bringing on co-founders, raising money, defining market problems, and building solutions, exits, rebirths, and much more. This is a roadmap for starting and building the company that is your perfect fit.

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