Nitro Snowboards is a rider-owned snowboard company founded in 1990 in Seattle by Tommy Delago and Sepp Ardelt. Exclusively focused on snowboarding for 35+ years, Nitro designs and sells snowboards, boots, bindings, splitboards, outerwear, bags and accessories to riders worldwide. Known for innovations such as the mini-disc binding system, the TLS lacing system and early splitboard and asymmetric-camber designs, the brand builds most of its hardgoods development out of Oberammergau, Germany, and runs its board, binding and graphics work from Salt Lake City, Utah, while remaining independent and privately held.
David Lokshin is the co-founder and CEO of Trace, an AI sports video company that places an autonomous camera on the sideline of youth games and hands each player a personalized highlight reel. He started the company in 2011 as AlpineReplay, a side project with his father Anatole, building GPS sensors that tracked skiers and snowboarders, then pivoted the same data-and-camera engine into team sports. A Harvard applied-math graduate who began his career trading FX options at Barclays, Lokshin describes Trace as 'the creator and keeper of memories.' The company has raised roughly $71.8M through a Series C and employs around 130 people from its Austin base.
Curtis Herbert is an independent iOS developer and the solo founder behind Slopes, the Apple Design Award-winning app skiers and snowboarders use to track their days on the mountain. He spent nine years growing it from a $10,600 side project into a million-dollar business, documenting every revenue chart and hard lesson in public through his Slopes Diaries and Slopes Dev newsletter. He runs Breakpoint Studio out of Boulder, Colorado, and treats indie app development like a craft, taking cues from web businesses rather than other apps.