Why we Moved Back To Texas
I love you New England, but Texas is calling me home
I am a proud Mexican-American “Tejano” who grew up in South Texas. As a teenager I moved away from Texas to Chicago to put myself through school and find opportunity outside of South Texas. It was hard to leave home, but it was important for me to seek life outside of home. A few years later, my family and in particular my brother Dino followed to do the same. I worked throughout different areas in Cybersecurity/Identity and Access Management and in 2013 I took the big step and moved to the Boston area.
I started Good Dog Labs in early 2014 and a year later I officially became a co-founder with the on-boarding of my brother Dino in 2015. Dino and I Co-Founded Good Dog Labs, with the vision of changing how the Identity and Access Management industry looks at solving major problems in addition to having a keen mission of family first. Our customers, employees, and even our acquirer (Lighthouse Computer Services) all felt and still do feel like family. Since then, Good Dog Labs has grown tremendously and has expanded into multiple Cybersecurity service lines and has released version 1 of its flagship IAM Microservices Platform (Perseus). We are very thankful and humbled at the trust our customers, partners and employees put into the Good Dog Labs and Lighthouse brands. New England has been good to me — I started my first company there, got my first customer there, and sold our first of many companies to come there. My brother and I built something we are proud of in the northeast, but the call of Texas is hard to dismiss. After all, I started my life journey in “Tejas”. It was time to come home.
In 2017, both my brother Dino and I purchased homes in the Austin area. We moved back to Texas, back to our roots, and back to our family. Now it’s time to move aspects of our business to Austin and share what we have built with other young and inspiring entrepreneurs. More importantly I want to share what I have learned, my expertise, and the opportunity I had back to the Austin tech and startup community. I am bringing both my personal and professional networks to share back to our Texas friends. I want to make sure more people like me find opportunity in Texas and don’t leave.
Here are few of my trusted compadres that were part of the Good Dog Labs journey and are always excited to help.
● Adrian Mendoza from Mendoza Ventures, he is a Mexican-American investor and entrepreneur who helped transform our business from a consulting to a product company.
● Justin Nesbit from Gesmer Updegrove, he is our trusted lawyer and legal problem solver. He started with us when we were just an idea until now.
You can find me at the WeWork at 801 Barton Springs Rd, Austin TX, stop by and introduce yourself and tell me your startup story. You can also reach me at giovanny.pietro@gmail.com.
About Aldo Pietropaolo
Aldo Pietropaolo is an entrepreneur, cyber-security evangelist, identity security expert, and co-founder of Good Dog Labs, A Lighthouse Company. Good Dog Labs modernizes Cybersecurity services and governance for SMB’s and large enterprises using advisory and implementation services in addition to bringing new innovative products such as Perseus IAM (www.perseusiam.com) to market.
About Dino Pietropaolo
Dino Pietropaolo is currently Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder of Good Dog Labs, a Lighthouse Company. His experience in Identity Assurance, Identity Governance & Administration, PKI & Cryptography drove him and his brother (Aldo Pietropaolo) to revolutionize and modernize how Identity & Access Governance infrastructures are designed, architected, deployed and operated by applying modern IT concepts such as DevOps, Microservices and Containerization. Dino and his brother (Aldo Pietropaolo) have pioneered and influenced modern approaches to Identity architectures such as leveraging IAM Microservices to accelerate IAM services delivery and by subsequently introducing the world’s first IAM Microservices driven platform (Perseus IAM).
