Dean Guida

Tech entrepreneur and CEO Dean Guida knows there’s a limit to what you can build with grit alone. At sixteen, Dean bought the first IBM PC and fell in love with writing software. He received a bachelor of science degree in operation research from the University of Miami. After graduating, he was a freelance developer and wrote many systems for IBM and on Wall Street. At twenty-three, he started Infragistics to build UX/UI tools for professional software developers. Seemingly overnight, Dean had to go from early internet coder to business operator—a feat that forced him to learn some of business’s biggest lessons on the job. He immediately began navigating the nuances of scaling a company, hiring and growing teams, and becoming a leader, a manager, and a mentor. Fast-forward thirty-five years, and Dean’s tech company now operates in six countries. More than two million developers use Infragistics software, and its client roster boasts 100 percent of the S&P 500, including Fidelity, Morgan Stanley, Exxon, Intuit, and Bank of America.
And he did all of this without ever taking a cent from investors.