Silicon Slopes

Start School Sessions

Business EN ↓ 28 episodes

Start School Sessions is the podcast from Start School, the free entrepreneurship program Silicon Slopes runs with Mountain America Credit Union. Each episode is one from a live session.

Be sure to visit the podcast's website and support the creator: www.siliconslopes.com

Author

Silicon Slopes

Episodes

Derek White: Stop Falling in Love With Your Idea (And Start Getting Paid) 02.07.2026 56:52

Derek White has seen the future four times. He helped build the first internet bank. He ran FinTech at Barclays across the UK, Dubai, and Spain. He led Galileo as CEO. Now he's in stealth mode, building what he believes is his most important company yet — one built entirely on AI. In this Start School conversation, Derek sits down with Clint Betts to discuss what he's learned over four decades of...

Personal Leadership and Integrity: Lessons from Will West 02.07.2026 56:20

Will West is a Silicon Slopes legend. He's built multiple successful companies, most notably Control 4, a pioneer in home automation. In this session, Will got honest about what it actually takes to build something worth building. 00:00:00 - Introduction and Background 00:00:54 - Starting a Company in the Age of AI 00:01:25 - Why Be an Entrepreneur? 00:02:08 - Retirement and Starting Again 00:02:3...

Start School Session: John Pestana 01.07.2026 1:01:40

John Pestana, co-founder of Omniture and co-founder and CEO of ObservePoint, joins Start School for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about building billion-dollar companies, surviving the AI shift, structuring founders correctly, and why most people fail simply because they never start. From buying 40 million dollars of servers per year in the early days of SaaS to today’s AI-powered one-person...