Colorado CTOs you should know: Danny Gold, Levels Beyond

Back in 1998 Levels Beyond set out to create a content management system that would allow users to publish across every platform. Today some of the biggest and most sophisticated companies in the world use their products. Danny Gold, the CTO and co-founder of Levels Beyond, handles the company's strategic technology and partnerships. Gold focuses on creating software that disrupts the media and entertainment space. We caught up with him to ask him a few questions. Here's what he had to say: 

 

What technologies power your business? Levels Beyond is a software company that builds solutions for anybody who owns, creates or provides content. We’re building and providing a lot of tools for people who are geographically dispersed in creating advertising campaigns, feature films or any type of media content. A lot of these people work remotely, and our team is building a workflow that allows them to access and publish their content. We’ve used Amazon Web Services to build and manage our offerings. 

 

If I had to really describe what technology powers our business, I’d say Skype and Google Hangouts because that’s what brings our people together. For us internally, anything that helps us get together and have a conversation is great. We’re trying to rely less and less on email and impersonal communication. Everything we do is aimed at feeling together as a team.

 

What upcoming tech project are you most proud of? I think the most exciting stuff we’re working on is making video publishing and video distribution as easy as possible. We’ve worked with some of the largest media companies in the world; major studios, professional sports teams, large festivals, all the clients who produce the content we love to watch online. Levels Beyond helps these companies transition their content to online formats. Working with these high profile clients has helped us develop some very robust tools. Now we’re working on taking those tools, simplifying them, and making them available for more people on whatever content platforms are out there. Facebook is kind of ruling the world of video right now, and that wasn’t the case two years ago.

 

We’re making it really easy for people to put their stuff into Reach Engine, our media inventory platform. We want to help creators focus their time and energy on content creation and the creative process, while we focus on everything else. That means controlling where the content goes and making sure it’s targeted and optimized for all the channels that exist. We focus on the business aspect so people can worry more about creating really compelling content.

 

What trends do you see in the tech scene over the next three years? Everyone is moving more and more to scalable cloud infrastructures. You don’t see a lot of increase in people building their own data centers. As a result, security is becoming an even bigger focus. In our space, the Sony breach was a huge deal – really big news. 

 

There is a major advantage to virtualizing your business in someone else’s data center  that already has great security built into the systems. Collecting and measuring data for fast turnarounds is also a trend now. We’re seeing a lot of quick, small testing. You hear about programmatic advertising - putting content out there and letting software target people based on what they’re doing. You can rollout multiple versions of ads, test them, and keep what’s effective. The massive collection of data that’s happening allows us to test assumptions and act very quickly. In the next two or three years, we’re going to see a lot of that. The tools are there, the data is out there, and the analytics framework is there. It’s just a matter of figuring out how to tie that into what you’re doing and leveraging the data quickly.

 

What sort of people do you look for when hiring? Levels Beyond has experienced a lot of internal growth over the past several years. It was a challenge, but we made it through that time very well. It’s nice being through our growth spurt because that taught us how to recognize people who thrive in this environment. Tech skills are good for a quick project, but we’ve found that people have to be self-motivated, self-directed, and willing to take ownership in the company. We look for people who are multi-faceted, who aren’t afraid to think through what a client wants, and who can understand a business problem and work through it. 

 

We’ve also had a lot of success partnering with local schools. We fired up an intern program that has been huge for us. Some of these young people are producing as much as people who have been with us for 10 years, and it’s great for those veterans to work closely with these younger people. Levels Beyond looks for people who can check their egos at the door and work in a loose, shared-ownership, shared-responsibility structure. 

 

What are some lessons you’ve learned about working in Colorado? Words of wisdom? A few years ago, when we started experiencing a big expansion in our customer base, we reached about 25 employees and realized we really wanted to strap in and go for explosive growth. We spent a year looking at what our fundraising options were, and we discovered that it was difficult to raise money as a Colorado company because of the biases that often existed with out-of-state venture capitalists. 

 

From the outside, there was this kind of unfair view of Colorado. They seemed to think that people are too relaxed, and that it’s only an easy-going lifestyle kind of place. But in reality, it was the nature of Colorado that was positioning us for long-term, sustainable growth, as opposed to the quick burnout that many startups experience in high investment, high-pressure areas. Those same things that were perceived as lazy are what we see as sustainability and balance. As a company, you have to figure out how to manage that.

 

Levels Beyond has exceptionally aggressive goals, but we’ve had to figure out a way to let people pursue those goals in a flexible environment. You have to realize you’re building a company in a state that attracts people for a certain reason. Instead of fighting the stigma, we realized, “Okay, we’re building a smart business here, but we’re going to do it in a Colorado way. We’re not going to burnout, we’re going to do it flexibly, and we’re probably going to beat the other people to finish line.”

 

The Denver metro area is really experiencing a tech boom as well. People are moving entire workforces here, and it’s making the job market very competitive. When you’re looking for the more senior, experienced talent, salaries are going through the roof. That’s why we are working with schools, and we’re finding a lot of fantastic talent that way.