After running Alteryx “for 24 years, I have a lot to offer,” co-founder Dean Stoecker told our Kevin Costelloe late last year.
For those wanting to tap Stoecker’s years of experience, it’s not hard to reach him; he ends his memoir Masterpiece—excerpted in this edition’s Leader Board on page 35—giving out his email address to readers for “coaching, mentoring, or just a conversation about your journey.”
It appears some have already reached out. Outside of his executive chairman role at Irvine data analytics firm Alteryx (NYSE: AYX), “the rest of my time is spent, I would say, largely on counseling young startup CEOs,” he said.
“I’ve got six CEOs around the world that I work with today, everywhere from Australia to Tel Aviv to London, one in Mexico City. It’s fun because they’re really early-stage companies,” Stoecker told Costelloe.
As for Alteryx, “I probably spend—oh, I don’t know—eight hours a week on company functions and interviews and one-on-ones. I still meet with many of [current CEO Mark Anderson’s] leadership team periodically. I attend all the board meetings. I’m actively engaged in conversations about the future direction and strategy for the company.
“I’m actually enjoying retirement,” he said. “I’m actually still working pretty hard.”
“I’m a total space nut,” says Terran Orbital CEO Marc Bell, whose earned the nod as our Businessperson of the Year in the technology sector for his work at the small-satellite maker with large Irvine operations (NYSE: LLAP); see Kevin Costelloe’s page 4 profile for more.
Bell is not the only area exec keeping their eyes on the stars.
Last week saw Caltech’s Space Solar Power Demonstrator successfully launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The Caltech prototype “will test several key components of an ambitious plan to harvest solar power in space and beam the energy back to Earth,” according to the Pasadena school.
The project’s been funded by Irvine Co. Chairman Donald Bren. Last year it was disclosed that OC’s wealthiest person had given more than $100 million to the project over a decade.
“For many years, I’ve dreamed about how space-based solar power could solve some of humanity’s most urgent challenges,” Bren said in a statement at the time.
New projects headed by Eagle Four Partners are the biggest additions to Newport Beach’s base of hotels since the opening of Lido House in 2018; see Katie Murar’s front-page story for more on Eagle Four’s busy local docket.
Bob Olson modeled the design of Lido House on his home at the time, a few miles away on Balboa Island. The West Coast’s biggest hotel developer over the past decade now has another home—a double lot along the water on Lido Isle, not far from Lido House—and was showing off plans for a major re-do at a party last month, during the city’s holiday boat parade.
Whether the design features of the new home make their way to R.D. Olson Development’s pair of highly anticipated hotels at the renovated Dana Point Harbor remains to be seen.
