StrikeIron Management Team
Richard Holcomb
Chairman and CEO
Richard Holcomb is responsible for the entrepreneurial vision and drive behind StrikeIron. Mr. Holcomb has 20 years of experience and is widely respected as a software industry leader and visionary.
Mr. Holcomb is a serial entrepreneur in the Research Triangle Park area and prior to founding StrikeIron in 2002 he served as the Interim CEO of GadgetSpace, a wireless technology company, and oversaw its successful acquisition by Inphonic in 2001. He was a founder of HAHT Commerce in 1995, a major e–commerce application provider, and served as HAHT’s first CEO and Chairman. Prior to HAHT, he was a founder of Q+E Software in 1986, a supplier of client–server database access technology, and served as that company’s CEO, president, and chairman from inception to its acquisition by Intersolv in 1994.
Mr. Holcomb is an active venture investor in several technology companies. He also serves on the corporate boards of several public and private technology companies including Neon Systems, ChannelAdvisor, IITS, and Ultimus.
Mr. Holcomb has served on several public advisory boards including the NCSU Graduate School Board of Advisors, the North Carolina Electronics and Information Technology Association (NCEITA), the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), NCSU Engineering Entrepreneur’s Program Advisory Board, and is a former appointed member of the North Carolina Information Resource Management Commission (IRMC).
During his career, Mr. Holcomb has won several awards including the 1993 Ernst and Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year for North Carolina and the 1996 Business Leader Top Gun Entrepreneur of the Year. Mr. Holcomb received a B.S. from the University of South Carolina and an M.S. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University.
Bob Brauer
President and Co–Founder
Bob Brauer is the visionary behind StrikeIron with a zeal for exploiting new technologies to create exciting products and services. As President, he is responsible for StrikeIron’s product vision and strategy, as well as providing an integrated direction of sales, marketing, and technology.
Prior to StrikeIron, Mr. Brauer was the founding Chief Executive Officer for the DataFlux Corporation, an innovative database management software company launched in 1996, financed by the Aurora Funds and several private investors, and acquired by SAS Institute in June of 2000. Prior to DataFlux, Mr. Brauer was a software engineer with Seer Technologies.
Mr. Brauer is a frequent guest speaker at software industry technology conferences and has appeared as an author in several industry publications, including Web Services Journal and Webservices.org. In 2004, Mr. Brauer received the Triangle Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 Leadership Award. He was nominated for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2001 and 2004, and was chosen to the Research Triangle area’s Impact 100 presented by Business Leader magazine. Mr. Brauer holds a B.S. in Computer Science from The Ohio State University. Read Bob's Blog
David Motsinger
Chief Technical Officer
David Motsinger leads the design and development of the Web Services Marketplace with a focus on making systems easier to use and scalable to the industry. As Chief Technology Officer, he manages a team of developers that is responsible for all aspects of product development, delivery and post sales technical support.
A serial entrepreneur with over 20 years experience, Mr. Motsinger was a co-founder and former CTO of Covelight Systems. Prior to co-founding Covelight, Mr. Motsinger was President and CEO of GadgetSpace, a wireless application infrastructure software company that he co-founded in 1999 and sold to InPhonic in 2001. He was also Director of Business Development for HAHT software, was Director of Software Development for Relativity Technologies, and held senior software engineering positions at Versata (VATA). Mr. Motsinger holds a B.S. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University.
Bryan Holjes
VP Sales
Mr Holjes leads StrikeIron's strategy for getting data into the enterprise. He has over 15 years of experience in strategic marketing and sales management. Prior to joining StrikeIron, Bryan held executive sales and marketing positions with several successful technology startup companies, including Accipiter, an Internet Ad Management company, Alerts,Inc., an alerting infrastructure company where he was responsible for creating high profile relationships with companies such as Glaxo, Pfizer, CBSMarketwatch and CNNSI.
Prior to Alerts, he led the sale of enterprise software development tools to companies such as EDS, USAA, Chevron and WorldCom for RogueWave Software. Before that he was at ArcaMax, Inc. where he helped lead the growth from pre-revenue to more than $7 million in annual sales.