A remote control is a small object with an unreasonable amount of authority. In a hotel room, it can decide whether the evening feels familiar. In a truck sleeper, it can put a game within reach after the driving is done. Lance Platt has spent much of his working life dealing with what must happen before somebody can sit down, press a button and expect the thing to work.
His businesses occupy places where people spend time away from their own living rooms. Groove Technology Solutions serves properties. EpicVue serves trucking fleets. Della Connect works in smart building software. The settings differ, but each puts technology between an operator buying a system and a person trying to get on with an ordinary day.
There is a useful clue to Platt’s thinking in the humble television. The screen is visible. The agreements, installation, network and support behind it are considerably less photogenic. His career suggests a sustained interest in that second part: making an apparently simple experience possible in a setting where it takes some organizing.
Six hundred screens and sixty seats
Platt founded Groove in 2007, when the business was known as Groove Entertainment Technologies. The opening he saw was practical. Some providers were moving away from television service, leaving an opportunity for a company prepared to do the work. By 2012, Groove was dealing in television, internet, telephone and security services across residential and commercial settings.
Commercial work supplied some memorable changes of scale. Groove installed satellite service for 600 televisions at Salt Lake City’s EnergySolutions Arena. It also provided television service for Boise State. An arena installation asks a different question from the one asked in a living room: how do you deliver the familiar picture across a building full of screens?
At Jordan Commons, the company went in the opposite direction. A partnership with the Larry H. Miller Company produced the Groove VIP Theater, an auditorium for about 60 guests, with reclining seats, food and service at the seat. An ordinary cinema might have accommodated several hundred people. This one made a business proposition out of having fewer.
The two projects sit neatly together. One spread television across a large venue. The other made watching a film more intimate. Both depended on understanding the circumstances around the entertainment. A picture on a screen can be the same picture while the experience of watching it changes completely.
The living room takes the night shift
In 2014, another setting entered the picture: the truck sleeper. Ian Williams and Russ Raddon joined Platt in the venture that became EpicVue. It opened for business in May and sold its first fleet subscription in June to Boyd Bros. The offer bundled television programming with the hardware required to receive it in a cab.
For a fleet, that meant a subscription covering equipment, service and support. For a driver, it meant being able to watch familiar entertainment during time off. The distinction matters. The buyer was an employer; the person spending the evening with the product was somewhere out on the road.
Platt described the intention plainly at the launch: “Our goal was to bring the living-room experience to the sleeper.” The phrase makes the engineering almost disappear. A living room usually stays put. A fleet’s living rooms spend their working lives traveling between customers, depots and parking places.
Pride Transport was among the early customers. Its package included mobile antennas, 24-inch televisions, DVR receivers and more than 100 channels. The hardware made the offer tangible, but the commercial argument concerned the driver’s experience of working for the fleet. The equipment arrived with a human question attached: what makes a job easier to live with?
“Life is about being connected.”
Lance Platt · 2012
By March 2023, EpicVue was introducing EpicVue+, extending the offering into training and a dedicated fleet channel for announcements and news. Entertainment had created a place to reach drivers. The company was now developing what else could use that connection.
Platt singled out the fleet channel as the part that particularly interested him. Customers had asked for ways to communicate and express their company culture. That is a revealing preference for the head of an entertainment business. Alongside the programs people might choose to watch, he saw value in helping a dispersed workforce remain connected to its employer.
At the 2024 Truckload Carriers Association gathering in Nashville, EpicVue’s presentation placed entertainment, education and engagement together. Decker Truck Line, with a fleet of 700 tractors, had adopted EpicVue+. The platform’s scope reflected an effort to bring several things a driver might need into one place, while giving fleet managers a more direct communications route.
The next step followed the connection itself. In March 2026, Platt presented EpicVue’s Starlink-based fleet program in Orlando. It was designed to give trucks satellite connectivity across North America, including areas where cellular coverage is limited. Streaming and gaming were among the applications it could support during breaks.
He also pointed to the number of separate cellular connections a truck might carry. Consolidating them offered another practical reason for the service. The path from television to internet becomes easier to follow when viewed from inside the cab: several devices, several demands, one person who would probably prefer the whole arrangement to behave itself.
When the amenity becomes the rent
Back in buildings, Platt’s work had expanded into another collection of connected systems. Groove’s offering now includes networking, television, phones, access control and smart building technology. He is also a co-founder of Della Connect. The customer has moved from buying a particular service toward asking how the property’s various technologies will work together.
Platt has been willing to question the sales pitch around that market. Discussing multifamily properties in October 2025, he argued that early smart building systems had often fallen short of what operators needed. Installing connected locks did not necessarily deliver the broader benefits promised for energy management or leak detection.
His criticism concerns the distance between a device and a useful result. A property can acquire something described as smart and still have a difficult job coordinating it with everything else. He also identified consolidation among vendors as a source of confusion for buyers trying to decide which companies offered lasting value.
There is a second difficulty: even useful technology can lose its power to distinguish a property. Platt compares apartment technology with hotel internet access, which moved from an extra charge toward an expected part of the stay. A benefit can become so familiar that its absence attracts more attention than its presence.
For an apartment operator, that raises questions about amenity fees and base rent. Platt expects competitive pressure to push more technology into the standard offering. His observation is about the movement of expectations. Once neighboring properties provide something residents find useful, an owner has a different decision to make about leaving it out.
His own writing returns to the hotel room. In March 2026, he argued that operators were reconsidering traditional cable infrastructure as guests brought expectations shaped by streaming. The television remains in the room, but what people want from it keeps changing. A business built around delivering familiar entertainment has to keep asking what familiar now means.
The founder has homework
Platt’s education gives this career an organizational dimension. A University of Utah graduate, he holds an MBA from the University of Phoenix and a PhD in Organization and Management from Capella University. Before Groove, his roles included leading Circa 3D and serving as national sales manager at CrossCom National.
His leadership approach has roots in Appreciative Inquiry, which begins by examining what works in an organization. There is an appealing practicality to that starting point. Growing a business involves fixing problems, but it also requires understanding which strengths are worth carrying into the next version.
In his January 2026 reflection, Platt acknowledged that the leadership approach he had relied on for years needed to evolve. He described spending more time on his own development. The admission fits the business’s changing scope: adding capabilities also adds demands on the person responsible for bringing them together.
Outside work, his company biography supplies a few less academic details. He is married to Robyn, has four children and has competed in the Canadian Death Race. “Adrenaline junkie” is his own description. A doctorate and an endurance race make an unusual pair of extracurricular commitments, although both suggest a willingness to stay with something difficult.
His service commitments include the DIRECTV Dealer Advisory Council, which he joined in 2011, and Lighthouse Sanctuary. The nonprofit currently lists him as vice president. It supports children in the Philippines who have survived exploitation and abuse, with shelter, education and skills development. The work gives his organizational experience a setting beyond commercial technology.
Recognition has followed the business career. EY named Platt a Mountain West Entrepreneur Of The Year finalist in 2024. In 2026, he accepted Groove’s DIRECTV FOR BUSINESS Hospitality & Institutions Dealer of the Year award for 2025 on the team’s behalf. Both mark a career that began with the less glamorous work behind a television signal.
A September 2026 agreement added music to the next chapter. LiveOne announced a five-year partnership bringing a customized Slacker Radio application to Groove’s TotalVue platform for senior living communities. The arrangement combines personalized listening with the property’s entertainment experience. Once again, a familiar pleasure needs an unfamiliar amount of coordination.
The thread through Platt’s work is easier to see from the user’s chair. A driver settles into a sleeper. A guest picks up a remote. A resident chooses some music. Each wants a small part of the day to feel comfortable and comprehensible. Behind that modest wish sits a considerable amount of business.