John M. Mueller
Founding Member at Illini Angels
Austin, Texas
Overview
Work Experience
Founding Member
2023 - Current
Illini Angels is a powerful cohort of investors that brings decades of experience in investing, innovating, building strong companies, establishing connections, and encouraging the highest-impact relationships. Every opportunity we create reflects the world-class technological leadership of the University of Illinois and its thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. As a Founding Member, I've committed to advising, supporting, and investing in the great ideas from the University of Illinois that drive global innovation. We are improving the world by supporting the companies that will make it happen. And in the process showing our Illini pride.
Illini Angels, a program of Illinois Ventures, is the official alumni angel network for the University of Illinois System.
Owner
2018
Owner of the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge / Keweenaw Resort, LLC
Co-founder, President
2014
Building products and services to help runners clean up trash: "cleaning the world one run at a time".
Pick’n Run develops software (e.g. mobile app) and hardware (e.g. backpacks) to make it fun and easy for runners to clean up trash.
Founder and Director
1998
* In charge of technology development, overall company strategy, business development, and staffing. Founded the company in 1998.
Assistant Professor
2017 - 2022
Assistant Professor
2016 - 2017
Focus: entrepreneurial finance, technology entrepreneurship, sports entrepreneurship
Chapter Director
2013 - 2017
Started and ran the Kalamazoo chapter of Startup Grind, the first Startup Grind chapter in Michigan. Started the Fresno chapter in Fresno, California with 4 other team members.
The world's largest startup community, actively educating, inspiring, & connecting 5M members across 600+ chapters & 125+ countries.
Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship
2012 - 2015
Focus: entrepreneurial finance, technology entrepreneurship, sports entrepreneurship
Instructor / Research Assistant
2008 - 2012
Teaching entrepreneurial finance (created course), and performing research with co-authors on entrepreneurial finance (resourceful financing), opportunity discovery/creation, entrepreneurial orientation, and accounting (internal control weaknesses)
Owner and Director
2004 - 2008
CSA was a software development company that built software applications for storage purposes including backup, online storage, and storage aggregation. Sony, Onstream (subsidiary of Philips Electronics), and Iomega were all companies that were partners of CSA. I bought the company in 2004 and ran the day-to-day operations.