Sean Maday

Boulder Valley 40 Under Forty

“I am proud of the work Patriot Boot Camp does, and love symbolizing a great cause on an awesome shirt,” said program director Sean Maday.

He should know about shirts. While still a student at Michigan State University, he founded RetroDuck.com, a novelty T-shirt company that generated $250,000 in annual sales with four employees.

But there’s nothing retro about the nonprofit Patriot Boot Camp, which helps military veterans and their spouses build technology companies. Maday and his Boulder-based team have staged three-day Patriot Boot Camp events for more than 155 participants in New York, North Carolina and Detroit. Participating companies have gone on to raise more than $31 million in venture capital.

Maday is an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve based at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora and was promoted to major in June, but also was the first full-time employee of Patriot Boot Camp.

“An individual’s transition from the military to civilian life can be a long and difficult process,” Maday said. “This transition can be even more challenging when a veteran or military spouse has aspirations of breaking into a niche domain like technology entrepreneurship. As a military veteran who has successfully held civilian technology jobs, I am familiar with those challenges and strive to help others navigate this professional labyrinth.”

Maday’s resume includes work as a geospatial sales engineer at Google, a product manager at Gnip, and founder of Superior-based SigActs Inc., developer of a technology to process and map daily news reports.

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