Venture Builder Coplex Expands Executive Team of Notable Entrepreneurs to Assist in Creating High-Growth Technology Companies

Coplex, a Venture Builder that partners with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and corporate innovators to start high-growth tech companies, announced the expansion of its executive staff, board of directors and mentor network. Deepening its bench strength, Coplex has expanded its team to include tech leaders from Granicus, OpenDoor, Lighter Capital, Uber, Neil Patel Digital, and IBM. Coplex also expanded its mentor network to include successful technology executives with experience from Google, Uber, PetSmart and GoDaddy. The moves come as Coplex aggressively increases its capacity for rapidly taking concept-stage startups and ideas from seed-ready to companies with multi-million-dollar valuations.

“Giving our ventures the opportunity to work alongside seasoned entrepreneurs and industry experts is a key component to accelerating their path to seed-ready,” said Zach Ferres, CEO, Coplex. “The new additions to our team and mentor network have impressive track records and the type of expertise that’s required to start a high-tech growth company.”

Tom Spengler joins Coplex as partner and chief revenue officer, a pivotal role that influences the future of the company and covers growth, sales, marketing, and partnerships. Spengler is passionate about developing ideas into market-leading companies, building and growing successful teams, and expanding Coplex to an internationally recognized contributor to tech entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Coplex, Spengler was the founder and CEO at Granicus. Tom led the company from 0 to 1,300 customers, becoming the market leader in cloud software for government. Granicus was acquired by Vista Equity Partners for $150M in 2016.

“I have tremendous respect for the team at Coplex and the leadership behind it,” said Spengler. “I think back to how much faster we could’ve built Granicus if we would’ve used a platform like Coplex. I firmly believe in the Coplex thesis that traditional industry entrepreneurs and corporations, small and big, are uniquely positioned to use their unfair advantages to build highly-valuable tech companies.”

The structured Venture Builder programs at Coplex provide a proven process and teams to shape business modules, quickly test and validate critical assumptions, assemble an operating team, build technology, bring concepts to market, and support in fundraising at graduation.

Michael Kaplan, principal of Performance Team, one of the largest third-party logistics companies in the country, is joining Coplex’s Board of Directors. Kaplan also serves as a board member at TGen, a genomics research corporation, and is a partner at DFE Venture Fund, the VC arm for the family office of Bennett Dorranceof Campbell Soup fame.

Coplex Mentor Network Additions:

Jaime Casap, Chief Education Evangelist, Google

Jaime Casap is the chief education evangelist at Google. He evangelizes the power and potential of technology and the web as enabling and supporting tools in pursuit of promoting inquiry-driven learning models. Casap collaborates with school systems, educational organizations, and leaders focused on building innovation and iteration into our education policies and practices. He speaks on education, technology, innovation, and generation Z, at events around the world.

Rebecca Clyde, CEO and Co-founder, Botco.ai

Rebecca Clyde is the co-founder and CEO of Botco.ai, a conversational marketing startup that enables businesses to engage customers with AI-enabled chatbots. With more than 20 years in digital marketing in the technology industry, she is passionate about advancing women in tech and currently serves as the co-managing director for Girls in Tech Phoenix. Prior to Botco.ai, Rebecca co-founded a digital marketing agency, Ideas Collide, now in its 14th year serving global enterprise clients. She was previously a digital strategist at Intel and holds an MBA from Arizona State University.

Joe Jacober, CEO, Innovative Brands CPG Business Accelerator

Joe Jacober brings his 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and brand revitalization authority to support businesses to help them scale, improve top line and maximize bottom-line results. He brings a proven level of unique and meaningful leadership to build successful teams, drive profitable results and add value to a company through improved processes, creative problem solving, critical thinking and aligning the company, customer and consumer interests.

YanivMasjedi, Chief Marketing Officer, Nextiva 

Yaniv Masjedi is chief marketing officer at Nextiva, a leading business communications company based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Yaniv is part of Nextiva’s founding team, and manages the company’s marketing and branding efforts by creating strategies to drive awareness and share the story of the company’s customer-centric culture, known as Amazing Service. He also initiates programs related to demand generation, advertising, marketing communications and thought leadership. In addition to his work at Nextiva, Yaniv writes on business topics for leading publications.

Valerie Paxton, Co-founder and Former Vice President, Allegro Enterprises

Valerie Paxton currently acts as a business advisor, investor, and consultant to several U.S. based startup companies, primarily in the restaurant, hospitality and healthcare industries. She is also a freelance writer and critic and travels the world sharing food, wine and spirit trends and writing about her adventures. Paxton’s career in PR, marketing, communications, and investor relations started in 1988 as one of the first employees at the now Fortune 500 company Insight Enterprises, Inc. (NSIT). After helping Insight grow from $1 Million in annual net sales to over $1 Billion, she left to pursue her dream of owning a company. Paxton and her business partner Craig Hood formed Allegro Enterprises, Inc. and started doing business as AllegroMedical.com.

Steve Thompson, Former General Manager, Uber

Steve Thompson has over 10 years of startup, technology and consulting experience in Arizona, and has worked for, and been a board member at, a number of for-profit and non-profit companies across the Phoenix Valley, including Uber, Tallwave, one-n-ten, and Local First Arizona. He is currently focused on helping entrepreneurs and companies turn their ideas and passions into sustainable, scalable businesses.Thompson most recently served five years as the general manager for Uber, leading his team to launch and grow technology and physical operations across Arizona, Southern California, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico.

About Coplex

Coplex is a Venture Builder that partners with industry experts, entrepreneurs, and corporate innovators to start high-growth tech companies. Coplex assembles world-class teams, partners them with expert startup builders, and empowers them with a proven program. Coplex has started over 50 tech companies since 2017 and has been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, VentureBeat, Inc, Forbes, NPR, and Entrepreneur.