LG

Luke Gunderson

Founder of Utah Investor

Salt Lake City Metropolitan Area

Overview

Work Experience

  • Founder and General Partner

    2020 - Current

    Investing in Utah. Beehive Venture Partners is a community-centric venture capital firm with 3 main pillars: a venture fund, a startup accelerator, and an angel syndicate. Our mission is to generate returns on the fund investments while genuinely improving and growing Utah’s startup and tech ecosystem. Here’s how each of our 3 main pillars contributes to our mission: Beehive Fund: A community-centric investment vehicle dedicated to backing Utah’s best founders and startups. Beehive Accelerator: Surrounds founders with the capital, mentorship, resources, network, and support they need to be successful. Beehive Syndicate: Enables a network of Utah’s best founders, CEOs, and executives to invest in each other’s success.

  • Founder

    2022

    Utah VC is a repository of press releases from venture funding rounds here in Utah, it comes in the form of a Substack email newsletter. Subscribe if you wanna stay 100% up-to-date.

  • Founding Team

    2013

  • Community Organizer

    2013 - 2020

    • Founding team member of Beehive Startups which eventually culminated in a successful merger with SIlicon Slopes. • Established organization's social media presence, growing follows to over 50 thousand. • Planned and promoted hundreds of community events including Tech Team Up, LaunchUp, Startup Conversations, StartSLC, StartFEST, and Silicon Slopes Tech Summit. • Created and led marketing efforts for Silicon Slopes Tech Summit resulting in over half a million organic impressions and 24,000 registered attendees (largest in Utah history). • Assisted in launching the Startup Santa book drive receiving 80,000 books and raising $400,000. • Produced the Beehive Podcast and the Silicon Slopes News Hour podcasts which have had over 100,000 downloads and aired on KSL News Radio.

  • Co-Founder

    2016 - 2019

    • Led business development in creating key partnerships, developed the monetization strategy while outlining the product roadmap, and go-to-market strategy. • Met with 100s of potential customers gaining vital customer feedback that was implemented in following iterations of the product. • Created and refined pitch deck while identifying potential funding partners in UT and CA. • Developed from scratch our first custom circuit board that could integrate with our mobile app.

  • Marketing & Business Development

    2013 - 2016

    • Executed branding strategies, launched website, and assembled marketing materials. • Pioneered a referral channel process by building relationships with startup attorneys, venture capitalists, and other agencies which resulted in quadrupling revenue to over 3.5 million dollars yearly. • Managed company’s social media, continuously improved site’s SEO, and ran PPC campaigns. • Nurtured online leads, sponsored industry events, attended trade shows, and represented the company at community meetups, leading dozens of new customers.

  • Manager of Product Development

    2002 - 2012

    • Oversaw the development of several new product lines leading to tens of millions of units sold. • Developed branding, packaging, and retail displays for 1,000+ customers across North America.

  • Co-Founder and Content Strategist

    2009 - 2012

    • Recruited and managed a team of a dozen volunteers, contributing to 4,000+ articles. • Oversaw content creation and SEO strategy leading to top placement for relevant keywords garnering 10M+ page views and was featured in the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, and KSL. • Organized fundraising efforts resulted in over $200K of donations.

Relevant Websites