Boomtown Accelerators

Toby Krout is Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of Boomtown Accelerators.

Toby has been an active participant in the global startup ecosystem for more than 25 years as an investor, advisor, founder, and board member. As Boomtown Chief Executive Officer he works directly with corporate innovation executives, innovation practitioners, and top startup founders in industries undergoing dramatic change due to disruptive innovation. Toby leverages open innovation strategies to improve a company’s chances for success.

Prior to co-founding Boomtown, Toby co-founded and was the CEO of Boulder-based creative agency Atomic20, where he delivered marketing and advertising solutions to major brands like Crocs, Whitewave, Zayo, and Gaiam. In 2010, Atomic20 competed for and was selected by Gov. John Hickenlooper for the State of Colorado rebranding project, and Toby led a creative team of brand experts, thought leaders, designers, and writers to successfully complete the three-year undertaking. The project continues to be extolled as a model for large scale re-branding.

Toby was an early employee of several successful startups in the late 1990s including: Trizetto Group, which conducted a successful initial public offering in 1999, and was then sold for $2.7 billion in 2014 to Cognizant Technology Solutions; Mariner Systems, which was sold to VantageMed, which conducted an initial public offering in 2002 and sold to Nightingale in 2007; and Clear Technologies Inc., which was sold to Austin-based Trilogy Corporation in 2006.

Toby was an early evangelist of Agile Software practices in the early 2000s. He studied Six Sigma and is a Certified Software Quality Analyst (CSQA) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP). Toby has presented and spoken numerous times on open innovation platforms, and he has participated as a guest lecturer at several universities, including Harvard Business School, where he presented the HBS Case Study about Boomtown’s innovation partnership with Comcast NBCUniversal.

Toby earned an MBA from Daniels College of Business at the University of Denver. He has undergraduate degrees from the University of Denver in environmental science and geography. He has co-founded and invested in dozens of startups and served on the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship Board of Directors and the Masters of the Environment Advisory Board at the University of Colorado.

Toby lives with his wife and three children near Boulder, Colo.