Hello

I'm Brian Burt. Apparently you're curious ...

I've spent 20+ years leading multi-million dollar technology projects, starting companies, and leading teams to successful launches. Along the way, I also invented breakout groups for conferencing—leading the company that first brought them to market, earning 3 patents, and working closely with some amazing customers and partners.

I founded and ran MaestroConference for 15 years—a conferencing platform that served the Obama White House and campaigns (30000 events including 50+ with the President and Michelle personally), Airbnb, the World Bank, Stanford, and hundreds of other nationally respected organizations. We generated over $8 million in revenue and exited in 2022.

I have also led multi-million dollar technology projects at Charles Schwab and the Federal Reserve Bank, and delivered more than $150MM in measured enterprise value.

More recently, I've worked with entrepreneurs and business leaders who are trying to figure out the next right move—whether that's scaling their product, entering enterprise markets, or simply getting unstuck. I've advised public company CEOs on their hardest challenges, corporate leaders with large divisions facing hidden politics, and also individuals with very small businesses, with a vision to grow.

I'm currently also working on a new effort called "Hope for Democracy" to get Americans thinking about what it would be like for citizens to imagine, try, and grow alternative systems from our current party-based systems.

AS a consultant or coach

I have helped founders and business leaders with the hard parts:

Investment Strategy, Succession, Board Relations. I love thinking through how to structure financing, sort and address tensions between investors and management.

Product strategy, partnerships and technology/AI execution - If you are thinking about how to partner, plan, or use technology or AI to make your vision come to life, let's talk. Having led teams through the full spectrum of product development challenges, I enjoy conversations on this, the lifeblood of tech ecosystems.

Enterprise sales, market positioning, GTM - I'm happy to discuss challenges related to, for position products for large buyers, and navigating complex sales cycles.

Operations and scaling - Whether it's setting up systems that work, managing remote teams, or just figuring out what to do next when everything feels chaotic, I'd love to see if I can help.

I have also helped entrepreneurs who are wrestling with the tension between what they want their business to be and what it actually is right now—navigating difficult decisions about growth, partnerships, or personal direction.

Honestly, the vast majority of my conversations are more as "friends/advisors" than as clients. I'm selective about pitching any services, and just happy to talk with people facing business challenges. Let's start with a conversation - what's going on?

My goal with every business conversation is that the person I'm speaking with leaves delighted that we spoke.

Want more details? (Really? :)

At MaestroConference, I built something that didn't exist: a platform for large-scale interactive conferences— with breakout capabilities, hand raises for voting and opting in, green room and social features built in. We became the primary conferencing tool for Obama's campaigns and ongoing political organizing over 8 remarkable years. Campaign leadership told us we "totally transformed" the relationships in their field organization.

We worked with hundreds of mission-driven organizations—Amnesty International, the Sierra Club, Movement for Black Lives, the Climate March, MoveOn, Women's March and the like—plus customers like Airbnb, Uber, HubSpot, and Stanford.

And the participants loved us. Our millions of users gave more 5-star ratings than all other ratings combined.

As the sole provider of breakout conferencing, I also had the pleasure to work with many of the world's most respected facilitators, with frequent 1-1 calls and lunches with the luminaries of the field.

At MaestroConference we were honored to be selected into the 500 Startups Accelerator, and through that learn from many of the most respected leaders in Silicon Valley.

Before MaestroConference, I spent years at Charles Schwab, where I led the company's first AI-driven personalization system (serving billions of messages to 20M users monthly) and drove and led a new telephony system that was used for all inbound calls to retail brokers and service agents, saving the company an estimated $20M annually. I earned three company awards, two presented personally by the company president. I led projects, and for some time directed a team of 8 software engineers.

I've also worked as a consultant, running enterprise software projects with multi-million dollar budgets for clients, delivering over $100M in value according to client estimates.

More recently, I spent 18 months as Product Portfolio Manager at the Federal Reserve Bank, managing a $25M+ portfolio across eight banks nationally. Every project hit its objectives and deadlines—but I learned that the Fed wasn't where I wanted to spend my energy long-term.

Want to talk?

If you're doing something that means something to you, and I might be able to help, let's start with a short call.

Get in Touch

Curious to get my thoughts?

I'm often busy, but make time to speak to new folks. Feel free to reach out.

And... outside of work

I also develop real estate and tiny homes with a co-housing focus, play competitive ultimate frisbee (Grandmaster's division), sail a Catalina 30 out of Treasure Island, and spend time with my kids (ages 9 and 11).

I hold an M.S. in Mathematics/Mathematical Economics from the University of Minnesota (with a focus on Game Theory) and a B.A. from Carleton College. I speak Spanish and a little German as well.