Bob Long

Bob Long is a 25-year veteran executive and serial entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of Teachable Machines, an AI company delivering state-of-the-art predictive modeling for product and marketing teams; GoFiercely, a wearable bionics company focused on miniaturizing assistive devices for people with disabilities or people who want to enhance their bodily capabilities; and NextSpark, a marketing &a; creative software design and development agency. Prior to co-founding these companies, Bob was a founder &a; CEO of MetaCommunications, a SaaS software company that pioneered marketing workflow automation, with a suite of products powering the work of thousands of marketing and creative teams around the world. Bob grew MetaCommunications from $0 to $7.5M ARR, while its flagship product, Workgroups, won the hearts and the minds of teams at companies like 3M, Merck, Pfizer, Ralph Lauren, Allstate, Sony, Hilton, IKEA and Mercedes-Benz. In 2011, Mr. Long co-founded ProofMe, a radically simple feedback &a; collaboration platform for video, PDFs, images and more. Featuring integrations with Slack, Dropbox, Vimeo, Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva, ProofMe went on to become a cornerstone of creative workflow for tens of thousands of individual creatives and teams alike, including household names like Reebok, Samsung, Discovery Channel, Sony Music and ACM Networks. In 2016 Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad presented Bob Long with the Tech Pioneer award. Bob attributes his passion for entrepreneurship to his father, Robert T. Long, Sr., who founded Thermomass and turned it into an industry standard for insulated concrete walls. Bob Long has studied computer science at Iowa State University, University of Iowa, MIT and Oxford. Over the years, Bob has donated money to children’s cancer research and treatment programs at the University of Iowa Stead Family Children's Hospital and Mayo Clinic Children's Center. He has also donated his time to help aspiring entrepreneurs visualize and execute their passions.