Kyle York receives the Entrepreneur of the Year award from NH Tech Alliance executive director Julie Demers. (NH Tech Alliance/YouTube).
For years, Kyle York has helped to shape the state’s tech ecosystem. He is known for being part of the leadership team at Dyn, once one of NH’s powerhouse tech companies (later acquired by Oracle.) He then served as vice president of product strategy for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and general manager for its Dyn Global Business Unit, scaling it to $100 million in annual recurring revenue with 5,000 enterprise customers.
It is his latest venture, York IE, though, that clinched him the NH Tech Alliance’s 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year award. The firm, founded in 2019, has invested in more than 25 startup companies and works with more than 50 businesses through its advisory services practice. Its Fuel platform, a proprietary strategic growth platform to better help startups by providing research, planning and strategy, has thousands of users. York IE also incubates NH-based startups.
York has invested in more than 100 startups over the past decade, which have, in turn, created thousands of jobs. He serves on the boards of several tech companies, including Canvs, Lytica, Voyage SMS, CloudApp and Forcivity and is a co-founder of York Athletics Manufacturing, his family’s company.
“As much as it is exciting to reach the mountaintop, when it goes away you wrestle with identity and what to do next. I would be asked all the time, ‘Are you going to go be an operator again or an investor?’” he says of his post Dyn/Oracle career. “I want to do both. That is why I created York IE. We are up to 32 full-time employees creating our own company inside of York IE that is purpose built. It is the best of both worlds.”
His experience and lessons learned at Dyn are informing the success of York IE. “What we are building is only possible with that background and the lens of building Dyn to the great heights. We have the track record,” York says. “I also think because it was such an infrastructure, cloud computing, internet plumbing type of company, it forced us to become deeply technical and be great translators for engineers’ product ideas and help them be brought to market. I think all those things come together nicely.”
York IE co-founders, from left, Adam Coughlin, Kyle York and Joe Raczka. Courtesy photo.
He says York IE is a vertically integrated strategic growth and investment firm, designed to be the operating extension of the startups it works with, approaching ventures more as operators helping operators. “What we are trying to build is a firm with a market-in approach: understanding your market and having it inform the technology you build.”
York says companies that were once startups in NH such as Dyn, Bottomline and Cabletron are great for the state, but they are fleeting as they merge, go public or get acquired. “What I love about York IE is that it is really a portfolio approach to building and working with as many companies as possible. Whether they leverage our free product or paid product, use our advisory services, or get capital from us, we have a lot of engagement points. Creating a forever company that works with lots of companies and be a stabilizing force for the New Hampshire tech ecosystem is really powerful.”
York says with a capital pool of about $15 million a year, it allows York IE to not only put in blood, sweat and tears, but hard cash and have skin in the game. He adds that the pace of growth of York IE’s software-plus-service business has been surprising and something he didn’t plan for or think was necessary. However, it has quickly evolved to a vertically integrated, sustainable business model.
As the latest recipient of the Entrepreneur of the Year award, York finds himself in esteemed company. York IE’s Manchester offices are just a few blocks from DEKA Research and its founder Dean Kamen, the very first Tech Alliance Entrepreneur of the Year.
“The list is a who’s who of great technologists and executives throughout New Hampshire for the past 30 years who have been great innovators,” says York. “I am honored, and I also take a lot of pride as a businessperson and a marketing person. I am proud to represent so many others who work in technology but can’t code a lick.”
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