Since Peter Lukomskyj founded a tech startup at the age of 22, he’s made a career of helping other technology companies during periods of transition or extreme growth. He was appointed by QuickMobile in December 2012 as chief operating officer at a time of rapid expansion for the company, which topped Deloitte’s national technology Fast 50 list in November.
“I was hired at an inflection point in the business, where the business was pivoting and really pushing into new geographies and new markets and really looking to mature its organization,” Lukomskyj said.
Founded in 2006, QuickMobile makes event apps. There are numerous such event app makers, but QuickMobile distinguished itself by focusing on corporate customers and has landed about 30 of the Fortune 100 companies as clients.
The company has raised $7 million in venture capital over the last year and has had a growth spurt. In the year that Lukomskyj was with QuickMobile, the company went from 110 employees to 180 and opened a new office in the U.K. Lukomskyj has since left QuickMobile.
Lukomskyj has quite a track record of growing companies. At 22, after graduating with a mechanical engineering degree, Lukomskyj founded Kanik Technologies, which made nozzles for snow-making machines for ski hills.
“After being a founder once, I never really did the founder thing again,” Lukomskyj said. “I tend to be the guy who helps companies go through transition and growth.”
After exiting that company, he worked for an Edmonton startup that he saw through a “very accelerated period of growth” and spearheaded an employee-led buyout. He then joined YottaYotta, a Seattle innovator in big data storage, as product manager when the company had just 20 people.
“I saw that company grow to more than 200,” Lukomskyj said. “We did that in about 18 months.”
He also spent several years working in global vice-president roles with Sophos, a U.K.-based security software company. He joined the company shortly after it had acquired Vancouver-based anti-spam developer ActiveState in 2003 and ended up in charge of mergers and acquisitions integration.
“The mandate here is to take a late-stage startup and add the element of operational excellence that will help the company get much bigger,” Lukomskyj said.
