Lucas Carlson

Product Leadership Highlights

I’m a product-driven, AI-focused technology leader and repeat founder who turns emerging tech into category-defining platforms.

LEADx - Co-Founder & CTO

  • Grew a B2B SaaS to train 100,000+ managers of Fortune 500 companies.
  • Led product development of AI-driven “Coach Amanda” app across Web, iOS, and Android.
  • Achieved SOC II Type 2 compliance for an audited secure platform.

CenturyLink - Chief Innovation Officer

  • Launched Panamax, an open-source Docker tool adopted by 200+ companies in its first year.
  • Drove container adoption across internal and enterprise customers.
  • Built and evangelized a new cloud developer strategy for the second largest telco in the US.

AppFog - Founder & CEO

  • Built a PaaS Cloud that ran over 100,000+ applications across 6 public clouds within 2 years.
  • Raised $9.8M in VC funding, achieving rapid growth and acquisition by CenturyLink in 2013.
  • Led the product roadmap from PHP-only to support multiple languages (Ruby, Java, Node.js) with a 99.9% uptime SLA.

MOG - Co-Founder & CTO

  • Created an early music streaming service that was acquired by Apple in 2014 and became the foundation of Apple Music's streaming service.
  • Led product and engineering team.
  • Invented US Patent 15,809,888, a key patent for music streaming held by Apple today.

Open Source Projects

  • Published and maintained 20+ open source projects
  • Over 9 million downloads of open source projects I started
  • Over 1,593 stars across my GitHub projects

Published Books

Ruby Cookbook

Non-Fiction, Programming

Ruby Cookbook

Why spend time on coding problems that others have already solved when you could be making real progress on your Ruby project? This book provides more than 900 pages of Ruby code solutions to common problems.

Update: Sold over 100,000+ copies, translated into Japanese, German, and Chinese.

Programming for PaaS

Non-Fiction, Programming

Programming for PaaS

This thorough introduction takes you through the PaaS model from a developer’s point of view, and breaks down the types of services that Google App Engine, Windows Azure, Heroku, Cloud Foundry, and others deliver.

Big Data

Fiction, Thriller

Big Data

If you think artificial intelligence is dangerous, then you don’t know the real threat to humanity's future. Big Data is a fresh approach to the artificial intelligence sci-fi thriller.

The Term Sheet

Fiction, Thriller

The Term Sheet

What if the government claimed that terrorists were using your startup? Would you happily hand over the keys to your kingdom without a second thought? Or would you defend your customer's privacy no matter the cost?

Finding Success in Failure

Non-Fiction, Entrepreneurship

Finding Success in Failure

What if you could learn more from my failures than from all of Elon Musk's successes combined? Imagine if you could spare yourself years of heartache and self-loathing pounding your head against mistakes I've already made for you.

Non-Fiction, Entrepreneurship

The Craftsman Founder Manifesto

There are no big secrets to getting rich being an entrepreneur. There are no shortcuts. The trick is to fall in love with being a founder and dedicate yourself to the craft for 20-30 years. If I haven’t scared you off yet, keep reading.

SaaS Projects

Here are some SaaS projects I am currently building and actively working on.

CloudEnv

SaaS

CloudEnv

Keep your environmental variables secure and in sync with End-to-End AES-256-CBC encryption, we never see your secrets... ever.

Update: CloudEnv was acquired by Hyphen in 2024.

Track a Haul

SaaS

Track a Haul

Track and manage your inventory. Selling online is hard. We make tracking your profits and expenses easy. We help you keep your inventory organized.

Cloving

SaaS

Cloving

The real promise of AI coding finally made real in a free and open-source command line tool. The ultimate command line tool for enhanced productivity and superior code quality.

From the blog

I have written for Inc, Business Insider, Business Journal, KISSMetrics, VentureBeat, InformationWeek and other popular blogs.

Article

How To Cope With Startup Envy

I got an email recently... "My startup recently failed. I was the CEO, and it was in a super-hot space with three other competitors. Two of the competitors were acquired and the founders in both companies became super-wealthy."

Article

30 Things to Stop Doing As A Startup Founder

Being a startup founder is hard enough, but making common mistakes can often lead to total disaster. Here are some common things to look out for...

Article

Incubators are Bullshit

I am often asked what I think about incubators. Here I tell you what I really think.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's your background?
I'm a product-focused CTO who has built and scaled multiple SaaS products from inception to millions of users. I started AppFog in 2010, raised almost $10M in venture capital, and was acquired in 2013. Before that, I was the co-founding CTO of MOG (now Beats Music acquired by Apple). Before MOG, I worked at MeasureMap which was acquired by Google in 2006.
Do you do public speaking?
I have spoken at more than 30 conferences around the world. I am often asked to talk about technology and entrepreneurship for large corporations and governments including NASA, IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton and others. If you would like me to speak at your event, please reach out.
Have you been interviewed on podcasts or radio?
I have been featured on various podcasts and radio interviews including Unmistakable Creative Podcast, The Breaking Biz Podcast, The IBM DeveloperWorks Podcast, Tech AM PowerDrive Radio Show, Empire Flippers Podcast and others.

Book a Meeting

Interested in discussing product leadership, AI, or SaaS strategy? Schedule time below.

Lucas Carlson is someone I go to, to bounce ideas and concepts off of, because he has that rare trifactor of - Technical Relevance, Entrepreneurial Focus and Authentic Character; He remains technically broad enough to understand the landscape while deep enough to be able to build a prototype himself, he is grounded to the purpose of technology always maintaining a pragmatic approach and he is unfailingly authentic in his opinion and will not tell you what you want to hear unless he understands and believes it himself.

Andrew Higginbotham
SVP Cloud & Technology, CenturyLink

Lucas is one of the most gifted entrepreneurs and founders I've met in my career. He's driven, focused, insightful -- everything you want in a founder and an entrepreneur. He's also one of the smarter people I know - and is also a genuinely good person. I learn from Lucas all the time - and that is priceless.