As many of you know, last year we enjoyed a terrific experience and built a sure-to-be lifelong friendship with Tac Anderson, our first-ever Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR). Tac was a real visionary in the area of social media whose inspiring leadership galvanized the members of Boise’s innovative community like no one before him.
Over the last several months, Tac’s absence has been noticeable around the office. His passion for the Boise entrepreneurial scene was infectious to everyone around him as was his zeal for all things startup. We’re awful proud of what Tac’s accomplishing in his new role at Waggener Edstrom and the international following he’s created as a true thought leader in his field doesn’t surprise us one bit.
Knowing that Tac wouldn’t be with us forever, we started talking about his replacement early in his tenure with us. He introduced us to Jason Christensen and told us to get to know him. We would meet for coffee occasionally and it wasn’t long before we realized that Jason was indeed one of the smartest people we’ve had the privilege to meet.
In all of our conversations, there didn’t seem to be a technology that he wasn’t interested in and completely spun up on. He has an unquenchable thirst for technology, a true “geek” in the most complimentary way. A great friendship was born and we’re thrilled to announce that Jason is joining Highway 12 Ventures as our new Entrepreneur-in-Residence (2.0).
Jason Christensen, our new EIR
So what exactly does an “EIR” do? Well it’s probably different in every venture firm and different with each EIR depending upon their career experience. Here at Highway 12 Ventures, we view our role as helping to mentor new entrepreneurs, getting to know them well and build a meaningful relationship with them, and in a perfect world eventually back them in a startup. Hopefully in return, they learn a lot about financing seed and early-stage startups and a whole bunch more from being exposed and working closely with a portfolio of startups. In Jason’s case, we expect that he’ll also be assisting us with technical due diligence as well.
After a career in corporate technical leadership, Jason is embarking on launching his own startup, which incorporates patent-pending technology to secure sensitive information for use in mobile distributed applications. Along with some other terrific young entrepreneurs, Jason is also one of a handful of great folks carrying Tac’s flag of a “can-do” mentality in Boise and blogs on TechBoise. You can also follow him on Twitter at @jasonc411. Jason has the same passion as Tac did for creating a sustainable entrepreneurial ecosystem in Idaho and will be working with us on a number of initiatives in that area. Finally, you’ll see him writing here on our blog.
Please join us in welcoming Jason to the Highway 12 Ventures family. We’ll have him up on the site shortly but we couldn’t wait to announce that he’s joined us. We’re thrilled to have him on the team and look forward to an equally exciting and rewarding ride with him as we had with Tac.
Nice - congrats, Jason!