ABOUT US

We Accelerate Careers and Companies

Tech Leaders helps software developers step into leadership roles by building their non-technical skills and business sense to make an even bigger impact with their technical expertise, without burning out or losing touch with the tech.

Todd Larsen

Co-Founder

As a startup advisor, former Global Platform Engineer at Groupon.com and Founding Engineer at Digit.co, Todd has 13 years of experience building and scaling consumer products in startup mode and at-scale.

From building high performance engineering teams to shipping scalable products that customers love, Todd focuses on moving fast and leading teams to create a positive impact on the world with technology.

Stephen Bates

Co-Founder

Stephen has brought a practical and pragmatic approach to behavior change and leadership mentoring for over 30 years. He has extensive experience working with individuals and teams across the globe with his first company, Certain Change and now with Tech Leaders.

Stephen focuses on providing practical mentoring and training that is instantly applicable to real world situations. The phrase he likes to hear most is "that makes sense".

OUR MISSION AND ORIGIN STORY

Why did we start Tech Leaders?

Todd and Stephen founded Tech Leaders after realizing they were solving the same problem from two different perspectives.

Todd was a senior software engineer who had to teach himself the leadership and business skills he needed to become an effective leader as his previous startup grew quickly.

He was frustrated that he had to learn things the hard way through trial and error by piecing together the information he needed from books, blogs and mentors.

Years later, after consulting as a Fractional CTO and working with talented engineers who built their careers with their strong technical skills, Todd realized the vast majority of developers lacked these non-technical skills required to make the leap into leadership.

When Stephen met Todd, Stephen had taught and mentored thought workers from many different industries on leadership, people and business skills for over twenty years.

Now more than ever, the world needs technical experts with strong leadership skills, and Tech Leaders was created to fill this need.