Residence Rob Irizarry to Speak on Lean Startups March 27

Rob Irizarry, entrepreneur, angel investor and founder of StartupBozeman, will serve as the Montana State University College of Business (CoB)’s Spring Entrepreneur-in-Residence and give a free public lecture at 6:15 p.m. Wednesday, March 27, in the Procrastinator Theater. The series is a feature of the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship.

“Lean Startup: A Scientific Approach to Building Startups” will include answers to questions about starting and building new businesses using processes that minimize the risk of failure. Those questions include “Why do so many startups fail? What can be done to reduce the failure rate? How do I apply these principles to my business today?”

As Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the week of March 25-29, Irizarry will also visit business classes throughout the week and meet with students in the entrepreneurship program.

Irizarry, who lives in Bozeman, moved to Montana in 1999 to join RightNow Technologies. According to event organizers, Irizarry has nearly three decades of experience working with hardware and software technology in the finance, garment and automotive industries, and spent 12 years at RightNow Technologies in Bozeman, which pioneered multi-tenant software as a service for the customer experience market. He was the 20th employee at RightNow, which grew to over 1,100 employees before being acquired by Oracle for more than $1.5 billion.

Irizarry holds a bachelor’s degree in electronic engineering technology. He gained career experience working in and with public and private sector organizations that employ 10 people to the Fortune 10 building systems, processes and teams working in the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South Africa. Irizarry spent a decade living in Asia.

For more information on the lecture or the Entrepreneur-In-Residence program, contact Scott Bryant at bryant@montana.edu or 406-994-6191. More information about the CoB is available at http://www.montana.edu/business/index.php.