Great founders grow up here.

Luke Erickson is the founder of Startup Ventura and serves as Executive Director of the organization. With a background in business development and entrepreneurship, Luke launched Startup Ventura in 2025 to bring nationally recognized accelerator programming to Ventura County. Driven by a passion for empowering founders and strengthening the local economy, he leads the organization's programming, partnerships, and community impact initiatives. Luke's vision is to position Ventura as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurial growth.

Brent Stig Kraus is a senior revenue executive with extensive experience scaling SaaS companies through hypergrowth and strategic exits. He most recently served as CRO at SevenRooms, acquired by DoorDash in a $1.2B transaction, and previously held leadership roles at ChowNow and MINDBODY during its $1.9B acquisition by Vista Equity Partners. Earlier in his career, Brent helped drive Lynda.com's growth leading to its $1.5B acquisition by LinkedIn. With a track record of building high-performing teams and driving transformative growth across multiple SaaS verticals, Brent brings deep expertise in enterprise sales, go-to-market strategy, and operational excellence.

Brian Gonzalez is the CTO and co-founder of Curri, a nationwide delivery and logistics platform built for construction wholesalers and distributors. He began his career in startups in 2010 at Dollar Shave Club and has been immersed in the entrepreneurial world ever since. After earning his master's degree in data science, Brian launched Curri in the heart of downtown Ventura, where he continues to lead technology and innovation today. Under his leadership, Curri has raised capital from leading investors including Y Combinator and Bessemer Venture Partners.

Sean Herwaldt is a Director at Curri, the Series B last-mile logistics company, where he leads delivery operations. He started his career at SpaceX, which shaped how he works: first principles, no assumptions, move fast, and never confuse activity with progress. He then joined the longevity company NOVOS to build its operations from scratch, spending four years standing up a supply chain with no playbook, launching products from concept to shelf, rebuilding a customer-experience team with AI that made the team better rather than redundant, and writing his own tools when spreadsheets were no longer enough. Sean is drawn to the craft of taking an idea to something real, then making it repeatable and ready to scale, and he cares as much about the people doing the work as the work itself.