Speaker kit

Nathan Whittacre is CEO of Stimulus Technologies, the managed IT and broadband company he started in 1995. He is building rural fiber across five states.

Nathan Whittacre started Stimulus Technologies in 1995 and still runs it. The company manages IT for businesses across the country and, through Stimulus Broadband, builds fiber and fixed wireless in Nevada, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Missouri — including towns getting their first wired connection. He has been awarded federal broadband funding across multiple states, which makes him accountable for construction timelines, subcontractors, and compliance deadlines rather than for opinions about them. He wrote The CEO's Digital Survival Guide for executives who make technology decisions without a technology background. He is an Eagle Scout, a pilot, and a father of five.

Nathan Whittacre is the CEO of Stimulus Technologies, which he started in 1995 in Henderson, Nevada and has run ever since. The company manages IT and security for businesses that have no technology staff of their own, and it has served more than 800 of them. In the late 2000s he moved the company off break-fix work, a decision that reshaped how it operates and what it is accountable for. Through Stimulus Broadband, the company builds fiber and fixed wireless networks in Nevada, Oregon, California, New Mexico, and Missouri. It has been awarded federal broadband funding across multiple states to reach rural communities that have never had a wired connection — one of the larger rural buildouts awarded to an independent operator. That work puts him on the hook for construction timelines, subcontractors, and federal compliance milestones, which is a different relationship to technology risk than commenting on it. He is the author of The CEO's Digital Survival Guide, written for executives who have to make technology decisions without a technology background, and he holds an MIT certification in AI for business strategy. He speaks to boards, associations, and executive audiences about technology strategy, cybersecurity, AI adoption, intentional culture, and what it takes to build infrastructure in places the market skipped. Outside the company he is an Eagle Scout, a pilot, and a father of five. He is working through a sub-four-hour marathon in all fifty states and races Ironman, which is a longer answer to the same question the fiber build asks: what holds up over time.

What to spend your one budget cycle on CEOs, boards, and owners of companies that carry real technology risk and have no full-time technology staff to hand it to What the audience leaves with: — How to tell which of your technology problems will actually cost you money, and which ones only score badly on a report — A way to compare a security purchase against a hiring decision using the same numbers — What to ask a vendor after they have told you the price — Where the tradeoff is when you fix the loudest problem first, and when that is still the right call

Building on a public deadline Association and industry audiences, economic development groups, and executives whose work now depends on infrastructure someone else has to deliver What the audience leaves with: — What changes about a project when the deadline is public and the money is federal — How to hold a subcontractor to a schedule you do not control — Why the communities that get service last are the ones the market priced correctly and the policy priced differently — What an operator watches for in the first year of a build that a spreadsheet will not show

Adopting AI without betting the company on it Executive teams deciding where AI goes first, and what they are willing to put into someone else's model What the audience leaves with: — Which decisions to make before a pilot, because they are expensive to reverse after one — Where your data goes when an employee pastes it into a tool you did not buy — A way to judge a vendor's AI claim without a technical evaluation — What to write down now so the answer holds when the tooling changes again

The culture you get by default Owners and executive teams at companies between thirty and three hundred people, where the founder's habits are no longer the whole culture What the audience leaves with: — What a stated value costs you the first time it is inconvenient — How to tell whether a value is operating or decorating — Why the behavior you tolerate at the top sets the floor everywhere else — What to do when a good performer is the problem