# JP La Torre

> JP La Torre is the co-founder and CEO of Climb, a Dallas-based data and AI consultancy focused on Databricks. He previously co-founded Caylent in 2015 and led it until August 2023, when he moved into an advisory and board role. His career spans cloud hosting, developer tools, cloud services and enterprise AI.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Climb
- **Organizations:** Climb, Caylent, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator, Triple Impact Capital, Make It Work
- **Education:** B.S. in Management Science, University of California San Diego, Accelerator graduate, Summer 2016 cohort, Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator
- **Known for:** Led Caylent from its founding to more than 360 employees, as he reported at his August 2023 CEO transition., Caylent ranked No. 93 overall and No. 7 in IT services on the 2023 Inc. 5000 during his CEO tenure., Caylent achieved AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status in 2022 during his tenure.

## Career timeline

- **Before 2015** — Worked as an on-site IT engineer at Make It Work and previously founded a cloud hosting company serving small and midsize businesses.
- **2015** — Co-founded Caylent with Stefan Thorpe; served as its founding CEO.
- **2016** — Caylent launched its private beta in June and graduated from Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator in the third quarter.
- **2017** — Caylent launched a public beta in April and completed a $99,880 Netcapital offering in September.
- **2021** — Caylent announced a $16 million growth investment and an expanded focus on AWS.
- **2022** — Caylent announced global employee stock options, expanded into Canada, achieved AWS Premier Tier status and received a majority growth investment from Gryphon Investors.
- **2023** — Caylent ranked No. 93 on the Inc. 5000; La Torre handed the CEO role to Lori Williams in August and moved into advisory and board work.
- **2026** — Co-founded Climb, a Databricks-native data and AI consultancy; Climb announced investment from RLH Equity Partners in September.

## Achievements

- Led Caylent from its founding to more than 360 employees, as he reported at his August 2023 CEO transition.
- Caylent ranked No. 93 overall and No. 7 in IT services on the 2023 Inc. 5000 during his CEO tenure.
- Caylent achieved AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status in 2022 during his tenure.
- Caylent received AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year recognition in 2021 and Innovation Partner of the Year recognition in 2022.
- Co-founded Climb, which announced a growth investment from RLH Equity Partners in September 2026.

## Latest updates

- **2026-09** — Climb announced growth investment from RLH Equity Partners on September 16.
- **2026-07** — Signed a Climb Group Form D as CEO on July 6.
- **2026-05** — Published The AI-Native Consulting Firm: Rethinking Services for the Agentic Era on LinkedIn on May 22.
- **2026-04** — Public LinkedIn profile lists Anthropic certifications in Claude API development, Claude Code, agent skills and Model Context Protocol.

## Links

- Website: https://climb.ai/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jplatorre
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/josephlatorre
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/latorrejp

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/jp-la-torre
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-23