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

SaaS Projects

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

From the blog

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

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.