From IPOs to Building Nevada's Startup Ecosystem
Jeff Saling has lived through the full arc of the startup dream.
In the early 2000s, he co-founded and helped scale companies like Skywire, Centrport, and Ariba, taking three to IPO and another to a private acquisition worth billions. He's spent more than twenty-five years building and leading teams inside the kind of startups most people only read about in TechCrunch. He was the guy who sat at the whiteboard until midnight, sold the product himself, and then walked on stage to ring the bell when it all paid off.
After those exits, Jeff did something unexpected. He didn't retire or move to the beach. He came home to Nevada and started building something that didn't exist there yet—a real startup ecosystem.
When he and his wife moved to Reno, they noticed something missing. Great ideas were leaving the state because there wasn't a place for them to grow. No incubators. No investor networks. No bridge between the people with capital and the people with ideas. So they decided to build it.
Together, they launched StartUpNV, the state's first statewide incubator and accelerator. It began as a small experiment, but under Jeff's leadership it became a tight-knit network where founders get mentorship, structure, and access to real investors. From there came FundNV, a pre-seed investment fund, then AngelNV, which trains new investors by letting them invest collectively, and finally the 1864 Fund, a venture fund that takes the most promising companies from the pipeline and helps them scale.
It's an entire ladder built inside one organization. Founders can start at idea stage and climb to Series A. New investors can learn the ropes, write small checks, and graduate to managing real portfolios. And at every level, Jeff and his wife are there, pairing entrepreneurs with mentors and investors with opportunities.
What makes Jeff different is that he's not selling a course or chasing headlines. He's teaching people how to do what he's done—how to build, how to bet wisely, and how to grow something that lasts. He believes that startups and investing shouldn't be gated communities. They should be open doors for anyone willing to learn, take risks, and stay curious.
The result of that mindset is a thriving network of founders and investors who are proving that Nevada can produce world-class innovation. And it all started with one guy who had already played the big game, cashed out, and decided to deal the cards to the next generation.