Pano leads XRC Labs as its Managing Director. He wields 25 years of technology CEO and founder experience building new businesses in B2B and B2C markets across Web, social, mobile and gaming platforms.
XRC Labs is an innovation accelerator and fund for the next generation of disruptors in the retail and consumer goods sectors. Our vision is to be the preeminent ecosystem where innovation happens to solve the biggest challenges and unlock the next generation of opportunities facing the retail and consumer goods industries.
With Founding Sponsor organizations Kurt Salmon and the Parsons School of Design at the New School, we have created a first of its kind design-centric, innovation ecosystem for the retail and consumer goods industries at the ground zero for the millennial market.
Unlike traditional accelerators like Techstars, who focus on breadth rather than vertical depth and knowledge of the space, or company accelerators, whose field of vision is naturally limited, XRC brings a stage-agnostic, design-first mindset, encompassing the needs of startups, retailers and brands across deep domain areas such as omnichannel, product development (which includes 3D printing) as well as next generation retail analytics and targeting.
Our unique curriculum of over 30 classes serves the educational needs of both sponsors and startups, ensuring value from various levels of engagement.
Prior to XRC, I have started and run a wide range of startups, most recently and intently in the Digital and Social Media spaces across desktop and mobile user experiences. My passion over the last 5 years and today is the transformation of web as a more immersive experience. Users should be engaged not sold to.
Online and offline retail are in the midst of a massive restructuring. To that end, I have joined Eaglepoint Advisors, a full-service advisory, turnaround, restructuring and crisis management firm focused on middle-market consumer goods and retail companies. The team here is first rate — CEO’s with incredible consumer pedigree. They have asked me to join to help meld the digital, social world with the brick and mortar world.
I continue to run Guided Launch to execute seed and early stage advisory, investment and operating practice in the Digital Media, Consumer and SMB-targeted businesses across mobile and internet platforms. Since its inception last year, Guided Launch has co-founded or engaged with 4 startups in the mobile, Facebook Advertising, SMB and consumer web spaces.
Prior to Guided Launch, co-founded Hangout Industries, which brought the first 3D games and integrated virtual world to Facebook. Very early adopter of Unity Technologies game engine in 2006. Techcrunch 50 finalist in 2008 and the 2008 MITX Digital Media winner for “Best Use of Technology.”
Prior to Hangout, co-founded, built and sold Pantero to Progress Software at 13x trailing revenue. Currently the semantic interface standard for the insurance and telco industries.
At Pantero, I understood the challenge that SOA would bring to the integration world and oversaw the strategy and development of the first many-many mapping and rules based middleware to solve the data mapping and integrity challenges that come with the advent of web services — the loose coupling of services. This technology is now implemented at numerous tier 1 telcos where the many-many problem is significant.
Prior to Pantero, co-founded and bootstrapped Syntra/Clearcross, which we grew to over 1000 customers in 30 countries. Conceptualized and delivered one of the first commercially available Web Services (1999) that was licensed by Oracle and embedded in their ERP suite.
I started as a software company founder in 1983 when the IBM PC-XT first came out. We paid nearly $10,000 for a 64K, 10 Mb XT. At grad school, tons of students wanted to see it, never having seen this model before.
Times have changed. I have moved from application software to application integration (SOA) to digital media.
I lived in NYC for over 20 years and 3 years ago moved my family (3 kids and a lovely wife) to the Boston area where birthing software companies is much, much easier.
Pano Anthos
pano.anthos@gmail.com