John Richards

John Richards is an entrepreneur, venture investor, and educator. He founds, runs, sells, and invests in ventures. A frequent mentor, in 2015 he founded Startup Ignition, an entrepreneur bootcamp in Provo, Utah. Previously, he served as Google Fiber’s Head of Operations as it expanded to Utah. Richards spent over a decade teaching entrepreneurship at Brigham Young University and as Presidential Executive in Residence for Entrepreneurship at Utah Valley University (both in Utah). At BYU, his efforts brought the entrepreneurship program to global prominence with a worldwide #2 ranking. He was managing partner of UtahAngels, a venture investing group. He co-founded BoomStartup, a tech accelerator in Utah. Early in his career, he was president of a publishing company in Seattle, Washington and later started the first-ever online yellow pages that led to an initial public offering and a multi-billion-dollar valuation (InfoSpace). John is a frequent speaker at conferences and other events.