Ryan Porter’s first office cost $90 a month. It was a cubicle in a business incubator, which sounds like a modest improvement on working at home until you have tried to build a company at home. Then a cubicle can look rather grand. Porter and his partner, Bob Brenner, had an address for their ambition. They still had to work out what, exactly, the ambition would become.
The original proposition was easy enough to explain: put a live camera on a building site so people could watch their houses taking shape. A homeowner could see progress without driving over. A construction loan officer could see a project rather than merely discuss it. Porter had been working in construction finance. He knew the distance between an update and an unobstructed view.
In 2005, he and Brenner started HomeView Technologies. The name was sensible, descriptive, and destined to become inconvenient. Customers would soon want to look at things other than homes. Over the next two decades, their requests would send Porter into snow country, retail parking lots, cloud software, and the business of helping people respond to what a camera could see.
His career has a recurring scene: someone asks for something the company does not yet do. Porter pays attention. The business changes shape.
The view from a construction loan desk
Porter came from Southern California to Orem, Utah, to study finance at Utah Valley State College, now Utah Valley University. His interest in bringing a physical product to market survived the education. Finance gave him a way to understand a business once he had something to sell.
The construction camera provided that something. At an early installation in Deer Valley, his parents watched the live feed from California while he spoke to them by phone. They could see him at the site. A distant project had become a shared experience. It was a small demonstration with a useful audience: people who could tell him immediately whether it worked.
The customers then supplied a correction. Homeowners liked seeing their future houses. Contractors had an ongoing reason to monitor the work. A project manager’s need returned tomorrow, and again the day after. The commercial possibility extended beyond the pleasure of watching a roof arrive.
There is something appealingly unceremonious about this kind of discovery. The founders had an idea; the people using it had amendments. A customer request became a form of product development. The company’s eventual name, LiveView Technologies, left considerably more room for whatever someone wanted to look at next.
“If we build this and it works, will you use it?”Ryan Porter, 2023
A business that learned to travel
The housing crash in 2008 made dependence on construction an uncomfortable arrangement. Transportation departments offered another use for live video. Utah’s road crews needed to check winter conditions, including in places without convenient electricity or an internet connection. A camera that depended on the comforts of a building site would have limited prospects beside a remote road.
The answer involved solar power and cellular connectivity. The product began carrying more of what it needed with it. Later, mobility became another practical improvement: putting equipment on a trailer made more sense than repeatedly installing and repairing poles. A business born around watching buildings was learning how to move.
These requests altered the engineering brief. Electricity, communications, transport, and maintenance all became part of the promise. Selling visibility meant accepting responsibility for the unglamorous machinery that kept the view available. A dark screen offers a very economical demonstration of failure.
The team widened, too. Steve Lindsey and David Studdert joined in 2011, bringing technology and commercial experience. Porter’s finance and operating background sat alongside Brenner’s manufacturing knowledge. Lindsey helped develop the software platform. Studdert helped open markets. The work required several kinds of competence, and the partnership gave those differences somewhere to go.
- 2005HomebuyersWatch a house take shape.
- Early yearsBuildersKeep an eye on the project.
- After 2008Road crewsCheck remote conditions.
- 2017 onwardRetailersMonitor sites at scale.
In 2017, LVT took a prototype mobile unit to ISC West in Las Vegas. A Walmart relationship followed. National retail introduced a different order of customer: an organization with many sites, repeated needs, and reasons to expect the equipment and the software to work together. The camera had acquired a much larger job description.
Fifteen years before the cheque
Porter remembers the first outside funding arriving on the last day of 2020. By then, LVT had been operating for fifteen years. The interval matters because a business making physical equipment has bills that arrive before the equipment has finished earning its keep. A subscription can be attractive to a customer while demanding considerable patience from the supplier.
His account of those years includes mortgaging homes to meet payroll and long drives to repair units. The founder had to sell a service, deliver it, and find the money to keep delivering it. The spreadsheet and the roadside repair belonged to the same working day, even when they were separated by hours of driving.
That history gives his customer question its force. Asking whether someone will use a proposed solution is a way to test demand before committing scarce resources. It also puts the conversation close to the work. The answer has to survive installation, weather, maintenance, and the customer’s next budget discussion.
The 2022 Series B brought in $50 million. Sorenson Capital and the Larry H. Miller Group joined earlier investors Lead Edge Capital and Pelion Venture Partners. The announcement described plans for hiring and expansion. Capital could now support more of the work the founders had spent years financing through the business itself.
Public recognition followed. Utah Business included Porter among its 2023 CEO of the Year honorees. In February 2024, he joined a White House roundtable convened by the National Economic Council and Small Business Administration to discuss investment in underserved and capital-constrained markets. The former construction lender had become a participant in a conversation about financing other businesses.
In June 2025, he received an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Mountain West Award. The independent judging panel considered growth, long-term value, entrepreneurial spirit, and impact. For Porter, the recognition arrived twenty years into the company. The date on the award was considerably shorter than the work behind it.
A calm face when the motor fails
One demonstration in Wyoming supplied an unusually direct test of Porter’s temperament. A satellite trailer developed a motor problem on the way to a transportation department presentation. While Lindsey investigated the failure, Porter took the customer’s leader for a walk. Lindsey later recalled that additional orders followed. The machine had failed to perform; the conversation had continued.
Colleagues describe Porter as even-tempered and attentive to customers. His own description emphasizes facts and measured reactions. That disposition makes particular sense in a company whose promises must hold up outside a meeting room. Becoming visibly upset will rarely improve a motor.
There is another side to him at home. His daughter Kayce has described a playful father behind the serious workplace manner. Porter and his wife, Jackie, have four children. Building the company and raising the family took place during the same years, with all the competing claims that implies.
“I don’t believe you have to sacrifice family relationships to have a successful company.”Ryan Porter
He has said LVT should allow employees to prioritize family while pursuing business results. It is a revealing aspiration for someone whose early company demanded personal collateral and roadside repairs. Growth creates choices about how work is organized. His stated preference is for a company that leaves room for people to have a life alongside it.
The next request is already here
Porter remains CEO, with a broader leadership team around him. In September 2025, LVT announced former Qualtrics president Chris Beckstead as president. Beckstead brought experience operating a much larger technology company. The appointment reflected a familiar requirement in Porter’s career: bring in experience suited to the work that is coming.
By January 2026, LVT was discussing a platform strategy extending beyond its original mobile units. Porter emphasized reliable power, processing at the site, and the ability to respond quickly. Cameras provide information; customers also want help deciding when that information requires action. AI adds possibilities and a fresh set of expectations.
The product announcements keep revealing practical constraints. In August 2026, LVT introduced Essentials at an announced $1,000 monthly price for customers needing basic visibility and deterrence. On October 20, it announced an Axis thermal-and-visual camera integration, with shipping expected in December. Budget and darkness are both stubborn facts of a customer’s working life.
Porter’s ambitions now include closer cooperation among the different systems customers already use. In a Nasdaq interview, he discussed bringing information together across providers so customers could act on it in real time. The construction loan officer’s original concern remains recognizable: give people a clearer view of what is happening, then make that view useful.
Twenty-one years after the first cameras went up, the pattern is still there. A person has a problem, the existing equipment falls short, and somebody asks whether LVT can do something about it. Porter has built his career around staying in that conversation. The picture keeps changing. He keeps looking.