It was 2006. Rob Meadows was sitting at a lunch table in Silicon Valley, getting a wide-eyed stare-down from a group of 15 software engineers.
Hours earlier, they all had lost their jobs when Meadows sold his company.
Meadows’ brainchild, Lumitrend, which built mobile phone software before phones were smart, was under new management, and his team was asking their fearless leader what was next.
“I don’t know yet,” Meadows told them. “But you’re all hired.”
Meadows waited for inspiration and told his team to offer their expertise to companies in which he had invested. Meadows soon realized his time-killing plan might be his best idea — match great talent with great ideas.
He and his team formed Originate, a high-tech matchmaker. The startup partners with companies, small and large, that need tech help. It backs startups, nonprofit organizations and small businesses with capital and software development resources.
“The thing that always frustrated me was that there’s so many interesting problems to solve in the world,” said Meadows, a 1995 graduate of Bonanza High School. “But at one company, you can’t solve them all.”
That’s where Originate aims to help.
Meadows was born in California and moved to Las Vegas in his early teens. He was a student at Garside Junior High when he started dabbling in entrepreneurship, walking pets and selling pencils. By high school, he was creating and selling software for computer games.
Las Vegas inspired him, he said.
“It’s all about taking risks and making it big,” Meadows said. “I owe a lot of who I am to Vegas.”
Originate started in Silicon Valley almost a decade ago and has since expanded to nine cities worldwide, including Las Vegas in 2011. The valley now is the global headquarters for the company, which employs 20. The ease and low cost of flights and Las Vegas’ abundant hotels and entertainment make it the perfect meeting spot for clients and employees, Meadows said.
Originate’s plans for Las Vegas are ambitious. Company officials hope to help build a foundation that will transform Las Vegas into a high-tech hub.
To that end, Originate has partnered with government officials to try to make Nevada more attractive to tech enterprises. The company is an unpaid adviser on Secretary of State Ross Miller’s SilverFlume, an online portal that consolidates government forms for people starting businesses, and Originate staffers rebuilt the website of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, a public-private partnership that works to attract and retain business and industry in Las Vegas. Originate also helped LVGEA create a strategy for the local investor group NV Angels.
“Originate has provided invaluable insights into our technology and software developments,” LVGEA Chief Operating Officer Jonas Peterson said. “They are moving the Vegas technology ecosystem forward.”
But Originate has yet to create a concrete, for-profit partnership with a Vegas startup. Why? Officials cite a lack of homegrown technology talent, a problem that has spurred a second initiative for Meadows: grooming the city’s youth for top-tier tech jobs.
“Education is probably the biggest thing that we are focusing on next year,” said Russ Logan, Originate’s vice president of operations. “It’s the ability to not only take people from our universities, but penetrate into the school districts, from even junior high level or earlier, and spread the best practices for how to build technology and startups.”
Originate’s education mission is twofold. First, expand the pool of talent. Second, make that pool as diverse as possible.
“Sadly, it’s a white-male-centric world and can often be exclusionary,” said Alex Peachy, Originate’s director of software.
Originate invests in startups that help merge technology and education, such as EduSchedu, an app that allows students, parents and teachers to collaborate on curriculum. In December, Originate helped host a local session of the nationwide “Hour of Code,” during which junior high students gathered at company headquarters in the InNEVation Center on the Switch campus to learn basic coding for the popular game “Angry Birds.”
Employees have mentored Clark County high school students, and company executives maintain close ties with UNLV. Vice President of Strategy Brady Dehn is on the university’s computer science advisory board, and Peachy judges the college’s annual capstone course where students showcase engineering innovations. The company also has sponsored UNLV’s Tech-Connect recruiting event for two years.
“There’s probably only about 50 great software developers in Vegas, and we’ve probably hired half of them,” Meadows said. “I want to help Vegas get to the point where we’re pulling from a pool of thousands.”