Timothy Roy has seen how companies grow from every angle: venture-backed, private-equity-owned and publicly traded. Now he is building one from nothing.

He is co-founder and CEO of KARSA, a Connecticut wellness tech company whose patent-pending docking station sanitizes and dries athletic gear inside elegant carrying cases. The idea began with a damp yoga mat in a hot power yoga class. It became a hardware platform for yoga, hockey, lacrosse, football and soccer, with a first 500-unit production run in Connecticut.

Getting there meant doing every unglamorous step himself: filing patents, prototyping with engineers, negotiating with contract manufacturers, cold-calling, recruiting a co-founder, a COO and advisors, tapping state programs and non-profit resources, and managing every dollar of burn. KARSA's seed round drew $600K in about ten days, and ~$1M is now committed toward a $1.5M SAFE.

Before KARSA, Timothy spent 20+ years leading enterprise technology sales and partnerships. He built go-to-market from scratch at VC-backed Click Security, ran a region at Zscaler before its IPO, turned around a territory at PE-backed Pulse Secure, earned the VP's Award at HP, and made President's Club with $24M in bookings at Micro Focus. He led a $200M+ North America channel organization at Varonis, built Expel's partner program from zero to 65% of revenue in its first full year, and led global channel and strategic partnerships at SpyCloud.

He grew up with very little, never went to college, and found the discipline that changed his life in the Army National Guard. Today he speaks about building hard-tech companies, founder go-to-market and what corporate careers do and don't prepare you for, and he advises founders who are walking the same road.