How I Got Here: Det Ansinn’s career as a CTO and founder taught him to prioritize the people behind the tech

The Doylestown, Pennsylvania-based founder is the CTO of Rogue Fitness, the CTO of Neuralert and has been involved with multiple other companies, although he said he is probably best known as the CEO and founder of the web development firm BrickSimple.

He also chairs the Dean’s Executive Advisory Council at Drexel University (where he is an alum), was a 2022 Technical.ly Awards nominee and recently became the president of Startup Bucks, an organization that supports startups in Bucks County, of which Ansinn was a founding board member.

Ansinn said he is proud of Startup Bucks’ legacy and all of the companies it has helped support. Now, one of his main goals is to ensure Startup Bucks continues to be a sustainable impactful organization.

In all his years of experience, Ansinn’s biggest lesson has been that people are more important than money, and he ultimately wants to do work that he is passionate about and is impactful.

Here is a look at what he’s learned over his career in tech and entrepreneurship. This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about your career background. Did you go to school for something related to what you do now?

I was writing code back in 1977, so writing software and code had been part of my path.

I had my first consulting gig in 1982. And it was the first time I got paid to do something computer consulting related. And the funny thing is, I had no intention of actually pursuing it as a career — I had thought that I was going to be a medical doctor. So that was the path that I set forth for myself.

What happened is just that these things work. My summer job in college ended up being working for a military contractor, and my Drexel co-op experiences were with a military contractor, and then you finish school and you realize that, “Hey, I guess I’m living on this software technical side of life.”

I graduated Drexel University with a degree in electrical computer engineering, and I ended up working in [the] field, if you will, after that. So the entrepreneurship thing was always part of what I did, but the journey that I got there was that I came up through the technical side of things.

What is your business background? How did you get into entrepreneurship?

I had joined a startup after I graduated Drexel. … Having grown that other startup into something, I left it to start BrickSimple back at the end of 2001. And I think it was largely rooted in tech-guy thinking that, “Hey, I could do those things in business better.” And of course, you learn then that there’s a lot of things you have to learn and figure out on the way.

But the genesis for me is that I always saw this value of technology in business and the impact that it could have. And I guess I found my dreams for doing that were bigger than the employment boxes I found myself in.

How did you get involved with Startup Bucks?

What got me involved with Startup Bucks was actually quite funny.

Jon Mercer — who was one of the founding board members as well as outgoing president — Jon Mercer had a coworking space in Doylestown that was halfway between my house and my office. So, I walk there, I stop in and check in with Jon. I had been involved with incubators, accelerators in the West Coast as well as in the region. And I liked the things that Jon was doing there [so] I got just involved and I got to know Jon, through his coworking space and some of the companies that were being jammed up there.

[Jon] had started approaching some of the folks who’ve been more weathered and veterans of startups and whatnot, and suggested to create a nonprofit to go help and foster and support the startup community that existed within Bucks County. And when he came into my office, and was talking about the idea, I told him right away that I was in. I was one of the founding board members.

What is interesting to you about tech?

In software, what appeals to me is you could have an idea, you can sit there if you’ve got a computer, you can create it — you can create something and stand something up that can be a business. You don’t have to buy a bunch of machinery or massive warehouses and things. That you can go from idea to an actual functional business model relatively quickly.

… Sometimes a limited amount of capital really brings some amazing world-changing ideas to fruition. And that’s always been appealing to me.

They don’t let me code in any of my daily professional life events anymore, but that ability to go and take those ideas and translate them into something that impacts lives, enables commerce, has always been appealing to me.

What’s something that you’ve done so far in your tech career that you’re proud of?

For me, that diversity is really important, and the part that I really value from all these experiences has been the people that you get to work with. And whether it’s a younger founder, whether it’s someone who’s been along a lot of different journeys and maybe would be an angel or VC role — those are the things I value most out of all of it, and we can do the things that you do with your teams and build amazing stuff.

One of the hats I wear is I’m the CTO of Neuralert, which, we have a technology that detects strokes in hospitals, and I’m proud and excited of that. I think for me, that I’m at the point in my career where I can pick and choose stuff I want to work on. And I want to work on things that are impactful. Most important to me is I’m working with wonderful people. That’s key.

What is a big challenge you’ve faced in your career?

I think part of it is understanding that you can keep yourself busy and do that, but there reaches a point where if you aren’t going to bring your A game to something or you don’t feel that you can do it, it’s not otherwise going to work. I mean, if I don’t feel like I’m bringing 100% from myself into a situation, I just, I can’t do it.

And I think it’s important to know when you need to step away and when you’re not delivering what you should be doing. People will take a personal look at that like, “Oh, this is a waste of my time.” I don’t look at anything as a waste of my time, I look at it as, “Am I delivering what people expect me to deliver, am I fulfilling that?” And that’s really important for me at where I’m at, where I’ve been in my career — that if I’m involved in something, I’m all the way in, tends to be my approach.

There’s some things you realize that you’re just not as good at. Over time, but I think kind of becoming aware of yourself, that you can’t necessarily do everything. … If you can’t be your best at it, do you really want to be doing that?

What are your goals for your career? Where would you like to go next?

I went through my fourth exit that I’ve had in my career and it’s funny that, when you have your first exit, you’re thinking, “What kind of new car can I get?” or those types of things. When I went through this exit, I made a contribution to an endowment that my wife and I set up at Drexel for a scholarship to help students graduate. I look at other philanthropic things.

It reaches the point where money is not the thing that kind of drives your goal — like my goal for the next 10 years of my life is not wrapped around maximizing dollars in profit. It’s around impact — “How can I impact these things? How can I help the business and partners and things I work with? How can I do that in a good way?” … “How you can make that successful?

That’s the priority shift. And granted, my answers to that have been very different than someone who’s in their 20s, on the early end of their career. I will probably work until I’m in the ground, but it’s out of the excitement and being able to do all these different things.

What advice would you give to someone who is in their 20s and just starting out?

Don’t be transactional with people. Work and develop relationships. Those things are more important at the end of the day. When you’re doing that, I think that’s really vitally important.

Also, whenever you think you have things figured out…  the great pivot that one makes in middle age [is] realizing how little they actually know. And I’ve embraced that. Maintain your humility, figure that out. When you’re talking to people, as you learn, more connections and things that you make — you realize that everyone has had some kind of complex journey. Everyone’s had their achievements, disappointments, that it’s very easy to say, “Hey, I’m a founder and I’m doing these things,” you’ll gain a lot of perspective as you go through the experiences, go through the companies.

[It’s] important just to build upon that and never forget, I came from very simple, rudimentary beginnings. Never imagined I would be in the position I’m in today. Don’t forget where you came from. Don’t forget the stuff that’s important. Don’t forget that.

When I’m talking with younger founders and whatnot, trying to see things in their perspective, helping them out, sharing your own perspective and what you’ve been through, I think that’s really important.

Sarah Huffman is a 2022-2024 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Lenfest Institute for Journalism.