Mary Haskett

I was the founder of a technology company based in Austin, Texas, focused on cutting-edge identity and access solutions. Over the course of my career, I participated twice in the Techstars accelerator program — once in Seattle in 2013 and again in Los Angeles in 2018 — each time with a different venture.

Earlier in my career, I built and sold a profitable services company that developed high-end custom training solutions. Before becoming an entrepreneur, I spent many years as a skydiving instructor and ran a skydiving school, an unexpectedly effective education in both leadership and business. I competed at the collegiate and national levels, and even designed and sewed my own parachute using my mother’s 1960s-era Singer sewing machine — and jumped it in competition.

After graduate school, I held a “real job” briefly, but it didn’t take.