scottsdale-arizona
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From Sawmill Sawdust to America's Backyard: The Thiessen Family's Long Game with Pit Boss
Two decades ago the Thiessens were selling horse bedding made from wood shavings. Today their Pit Boss and Louisiana Grills brands sit in backyards from Home Depot to Walmart - and in the garage of a company that has been family-run since 1885.
Meritage Homes
The Scottsdale builder made energy efficiency standard equipment instead of a luxury upcharge - and used it to close more than 15,000 homes a year.
Matt Stone
Matt Stone is the Chief Business Officer of Corvic AI, the Mountain View startup building an Intelligence Composition Platform that sits between raw enterprise data and production AI. A Stanford-trained engineer who once walked on as a quarterback at the University of Arizona, Stone has spent more than a decade turning hard enterprise technology into revenue - first at Boeing, then as an operating partner at Intel Capital, and most recently leading strategic partnerships at the cybersecurity firm SecurityScorecard. He joined Corvic AI in March 2026 to scale its enterprise go-to-market across pharma, manufacturing, and logistics.