Mike PenaFounder

United States - Seattle, Washington

Mike Pena is passionate about helping startups cultivate winning company cultures, installing fundamental operational processes, constructing motivated sales teams with achievable KPIs, and creating disruptive marketing strategies. He believes in analytic driven performance indicators and establishing processes to create internal efficiencies.

Mike began his career as an equity trader for Trust Company of the West. He led his department in creating a broad market indicator essay that was referenced in a proprietary trading platform which optimized trades post the 2008 recession. Later he founded a venture-backed commodity exchange for used vehicle inventory called Autoref.com. The company went from an MIT business plan competition runner-up to a venture backed company with over 5,000 clients in less than three years.

Mike was then offered dual roles as COO and CMO for a San Francisco based, healthcare focused SaaS company called Circe Software. Since then Mike has held numerous executive roles and consulted for organizations across multiple industries including manufacturing, logistics, retail, nonprofit, and public sector solutions.

Mike holds a Bachelor's degree in Economics with an emphasis in Business Administration from Pepperdine University. Mike is a national scholar of the acclaimed Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans which includes members such as; Condoleezza Rice, Michael Bloomberg, and Howard Schultz. Through the association Mike was featured in a PBS documentary and alumni biography authored by Jackie Rough.

Mike is an alumnus of Pittsburgh’s Alpha Lab Incubator class of 2013. His life and career was featured in a documentary by The Kauffman Foundation and in several publications including; U.S. News & World Report, TechCrunch, Los Angeles Business Journal, and The Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch.