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Dean Guida, the Founder of digital workplace Slingshot and CEO of global software company Infragistics joins Enterprise Radio.
Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Dean Guida discuss the following:
- 1 You’re the CEO and Founder of Infragistics, an enterprise software company that you bootstrapped 30+ years ago. Can you tell me a little bit about the workplace philosophy you’ve developed over the past three decades, and how it led to create digital workplace Slingshot?
- What is a digital workplace–and how is it different from other workplace tools?
- Companies today have an abundance of data on everything from customers and products to marketing and sales – why aren’t teams using it as part of their day-to-day?
- Slingshot recently launched the first solution to make companies’ data accessible to business users. How does Slingshot’s Data Catalog empower everyday teams to access and analyze data, and put it to work?
- What are some initial steps companies can take to start to cultivate a data-driven culture?
Dean Guida started what would ultimately become global tech company Infragistics before the internet was even a sparkle in the mainstream’s eye. After a two-year stint as a coder on Wall Street, Dean found himself and his fledgling startup going head-to-head against Microsoft for a deal that would propel him to the forefront of the still nascent internet software industry. In one corner was Microsoft’s Visual Basic. In the other was Dean’s proprietary software. The company of less than 10 people left that day with a $300k deal. This was 1992.
Seemingly overnight, Dean had to go from early internet coder to business operator–a feat that forced him to learn some of businesses’ biggest lessons on the job. And while many businesses crumble at the mere hint of deteriorating market conditions, Dean built a business that has withstood a series of tumultuous moments in the internet’s ongoing evolution (think: the dot-com tech bubble of the late 90s, the explosion of the Internet, and the 2008 recession).
Fast forward 30+ years. Infragistics now has operations in six countries and calls a two-story, 74,000 square-foot converted warehouse its U.S. headquarters. More than two million developers use its software, and its client roster boasts 100% of the S&P 500, including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Intuit, and Bank of America.
And he did all of this without ever taking a cent from investors.
In 2021, Dean celebrated the spirit of entrepreneurship that has guided his journey by launching a $50M Innovation Lab to inspire internal inventors to experiment with innovations beyond the company’s core products.
And in 2022, he launched his first non-enterprise tech platform–Slingshot–to put data at the center of the emerging digital workplace so teams can make decisions that lead to growth.
Websites:
Slingshot: https://www.slingshotapp.io
Infragistics: https://www.infragistics.com
Social Media Links:
LinkedIn (Dean Guida): https://linkedin.com/in/deanguida
LinkedIn (Slingshot): https://linkedin.com/showcase/slingshotapp
LinkedIn (Infragistics): https://linkedin.com/company/infragistics
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