University of Southern California

Loyola Marymount University

Fractional CTO / Co-Founder LA CTO Forum

El Segundo, California, United States

For 20 years, TechEmpower and Tony Karrer have been in the business of working with innovators to build products that achieve business objectives.  Specialists in delivering award-winning, scalable, extensible, reliable mobile, web, software and database systems, our success has derived directly from producing exceptional solutions, targeted to specific business objectives.  We not only help our clients achieve business success but we also focus on creating long-term relationships and a real partnership with clients.

Tony and TechEmpower have worked for a wide range of companies from early-stage startups to established companies.  We’ve worked on a wide variety of solutions—from ecommerce solutions to hotel web sites, from a survey-based marriage-matching site to a complex integrated customer relationship management solution and asset management solution.

For startups, TechEmpower helps get product out the door.  Tony and TechEmpower were the original CTO and development team for eHarmony's first four years leading to its $110M investment round at in their 4th year.  Our startup clients include MyStrength, Marketshare Partners, Luna Imaging, LivePlanet and over 50 others.

For established companies, Tony works as an interim-CTO or technical consultant and TechEmpower help create innovative products, conduct technical due diligence/reviews, grow or turnaround technical teams, fix reliability and scaling issues, and get product out the door.   Our clients include JibJab, NAS Insurance, Sofie Biosciences, Credit Suisse, Royal Bank of Canada, Citibank, Lexus, Microsoft, Nissan, Universal Music, IBM, Toyota, Mazda, Hilton, PacifiCare, WellPoint, Xerox, HP, Marketshare Partners, Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Loyola Marymount University, Senn-Delaney, Lieberman Research, World Shoe Association, and many others.

TechEmpower

Founder & CEO / Consulting CTO

The Host Co. is a retail solution designed to help Hosts and Property managers sell products in their short term rental spaces. Simply create a store, personalize it, and begin making money.

The Host Co.

Aggregage is the next generation of business media.  Over the next few years we will be creating 1,000 online communities by bringing together content from the best sources around particular topics. We identify a topic (Social Media, eLearning, Human Resources, Leadership, etc), find high-quality sources around that topic, and then display their posts on a new site dedicated to that given topic. The original site on eLearning has become the highest traffic site on that topic.

Marketers, companies, nonprofits and causes are using this as part of their social and content marketing strategies.  This approach greatly reduces the need for content creation and puts the brand at the center of blogging activity - a critical step in effective blogger relations.

Associations and publishers are using this as a means of growing traffic and leverage high quality content being created by bloggers and other sources.

Aggregage

Founder and CTO

The LA CTO Forum is a vibrant, private, peer-only network of 300+ CTOs that meets once a month in Santa Monica.  I was one of the original five members of the group and have been organizing it over the past 10+ years.  In that role, I screen new candidates, find and prep speakers, and moderate sessions.  This group has been a fantastic resource and I'm proud to have helped it grown from 5 to 300+ members - the largest CTO group in the United States.  See: <a href="http://www.lactoforum.org">www.lactoforum.org</a>

As a member, I assist the LA Startup Ecosystem by providing help to startups and VCs as an Informal Technical Adviser, Formal Technical Adviser, Technical Consultant and Part-Time CTO.

I provide help to fellow members in areas such as scalability, user experience / UX, email marketing, SEO, outsourcing, recruiting, building teams and metrics.

LA CTO Forum

Co-Founder & Lead Organizer

Preem is a smart cycling platform that applies complex models to unlock the huge potential in the data 100+ million cyclists worldwide collect every day. It turns this wealth of data into value by connecting people who love to ride and helping them get the most out of every ride. Led by serial entrepreneur David Norris and Zwift co-founder Scott Barger, Preem offers passionate cyclists worldwide and the brands that support them a smart app to plan and discover rides, connect with their community, and elevate their full cycling experience.

PREEM

GIGXR is a SaaS Education and Training Platform for Extended Reality (XR) in higher ed, medical and nursing schools, hospitals, vocational schools, industry, government and college prep markets.

GIGXR

Preparing to revolutionize the sports world by allowing fans to invest in their favorite athletes in a fun and profitable way like they’ve never been able to do before.

401Sports

Founder & CTO

Element3 Health is a network that engages 50+ seniors around their passions to increase their physical, social and mental activity for healthy aging. We combine the three most powerful elements of health into one cohesive solution in order to tackle the $75 billion dollar challenge of healthcare spending associated with social, mental and physical decline in seniors.

Our existing engagement platform, <a href="http://GroupWorks.com">GroupWorks.com</a>, is in use by thousands of members in over 150 different types of groups nationwide and provides a unique approach to getting seniors active. We leverage active adults’ existing passions ranging from sewing to golfing to bowling. We then layer on our proprietary ActivityBenefit™ score and GroupMatch™ matching engine to evaluate their engagement and activity levels, and make recommendations to help optimize their health across social, mental and physical metrics.

Element3 Health

MentorNight (<a href="http://www.mentornight.com">www.mentornight.com</a>) brings together Startup Founders and Mentors in Los Angeles for a unique kind of peer exchange. Investors attend as well, but they have their mentoring hat on, not their investing hat. The goal is to get into discussion about the real issues that Founders face as they go through defining and building their business.

We are dedicated to educating and helping the next generation of internet startups. We meet monthly with unique sessions where startups share key strategic issues and get real-time advice from mentors. Of course, we are also helping startup founders to find help for their startup issues from peers and mentors.

MentorNight

Co-Founder and Host

I founded and ran Startup Specialists Network - an invite-only group of senior-level, high-quality executives who regularly work with startups. Our members are highly collaborative and understand how to help startups by having a network of resources. Members are “get it done” individuals, not simply consultants. We do not offer reports that expect the client to then find the resource to accomplish those goals. Instead, we get into the details of the business and roll up our sleeves to get things done. Members understand the needs and constraints of startups and know how to make things work for them.

We work with startups from early-stage to later stages with a significant technology component and are located in the Greater Los Angeles area. We look for startups that have or are near initial funding and have access to at least a small amount of capital. Our goal is to become the go-to place for startups to find real help. Our goal is also to become a place that we can find quick access to highly qualified collaborators for the startups we are helping.

Membership is by invitation only.

Startup Specialist Network

Founder and Lead Organizer

A fantastic organization that systematically promotes education that honors diversity in the classroom. By training and supporting teachers on proven techniques that give students the opportunity to reach their full potential and aspire to higher education.

Freedom Writers Foundation

Board Member

Consulted on scalable and customizable authoring tools and learning management systems.

Consultant

Consulted on the requirements, selection, and implementation of a learning management system.

PacifiCare

Worked closely with the founding members of eHarmony to define technical approaches to the scalable matching algorithm and helped with product definition.  Defined the development approached and technical strategy.  Helped define approaches to marketing spend analysis.

eharmony

Defined product direction, technical strategy and lead implementation of a system that would take data mining results and provide it to financial consultants in a way that drove customer loyalty.  This was a high-end performance management system.

Knowledge Stream Partners

Director of Systems Development

Full-time faculty position teaching graduate and undergraduate Programming Languages, Operating Systems, Software Engineering and an award winning Multimedia Design and Development course.

Associate Professor

Led teams of developers who were creating high-end eLearning solutions.  Used a wide variety of technologies including C/C++, Authorware, IconAuthor, and Director/ActionScript. One of the projects, Lexus Labs swept the eLearning awards and was instrumental in Lexus' approach to training car sales people to perform in a way that was remarkably different. Here's what an industry expert said about the project: <a href="https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/675/marc-my-words-the-best-elearning-demo-i-have-ever-seen">https://www.learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/675/marc-my-words-the-best-elearning-demo-i-have-ever-seen</a>

IEC / Quisic

Research around software engineering environments and graph editors.