NH Tech Alliance names York 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year

Kyle York, left, accepts the NH Tech Alliance’s Entrepreneur of the Year award from Julie Demers, executive director of the organization.

Kyle York, founder of York IE and a longtime key executive at the former Dyn Inc., has been named the NH Tech Alliance’s 2021 Entrepreneur of the Year.

York was honored Dec. 9 as part of the alliance’s second annual virtual Innovation Summit, which also featured announcement of a $100,000 investment in Durham-based Kikori.

York was honored for a career of growing businesses, including his work at Dyn, where he was responsible for spearheading corporate strategy and growth, scaling the company to $100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue and 5,000 enterprise customers before the Manchester firm was acquired by Oracle, for whom he worked as vice president of product strategy for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

After leaving Oracle, he founded York IE, an early-stage investment firm whose portfolio current numbers about 30 startups.

Besides honoring York, the Innovation Summit also featured a Startup Showcase in which six New Hampshire startups joined the virtual stage for the event’s startup showcase, leading to a $100,000 award by Gray Chynoweth and Liz Hitchcock partners in Millworks Fund Series II, which includes New Hampshire investors and the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority.

Kikori, the eventual winner, is a software-as-a-service platform aimed at giving educators the tools to offer social-emotional learning activities to students. Its three founders are graduates of the University of New Hampshire.

In awarding the $100,000, Chynoweth said, the Millworks Fud was “thrilled to be doing this today and to write this check to support a great New Hampshire entrepreneur.”

Also taking part in the showcase were:

• Concord-based Echo Ridge, which is using artificial intelligence to predict the impact of legislation on industries and companies
• Cyberhoot of Portsmouth, which provides the cybersecurity resources, tools and training to businesses
• Tru-North.Tech, Concord, which is working on creating a fairer and more balanced workers’ compensation process
• WayAround, whose app helps tourist venues like hotels and museums become more accessible to people with vision loss
• Manchester-based Kincern, which provides families and caregivers one platform where they can manage their loved ones financial and legal information.