Tom Stockham: matching tech solutions with human needs.

• Author: Dunn, Maurianne
• Position: SALT LAKE AREA - SwarmBuilder

When discussing what leads to success, Tom Stockham always points away from himself. The newly minted CEO of SwarmBuilder instead focuses on the high-caliber people he works with. In fact, success, he says, is based on "surrounding yourself with people who are really good at identifying problems ... and then solving them."

Before joining SwarmBuilder as CEO, Stockham worked with the likes of Ticketmaster, CitySearch, Match.com and Ancestry.com. Stockham loves building companies and fondly recalls writing, with his wife, the business plan for their first company on their kitchen table in 1993.

Stockham spent many of his childhood years in Utah, and it was his father, an engineering professor at the University of Utah, who initially sparked his interest in building companies. He told Stockham that the world needs people who not only have great ideas, but also are capable of turning ideas and technologies into businesses.

As a serial entrepreneur, Stockham says, "Building a real business is mostly about problem solving: What problems can we help our customers solve? What would our customers like us to do better? What can we do differently when things don't go as planned?" In...