CE Pro December 2022 - 27

Peter Dyroff, Founder,
PureTech Alliance
MULTI-TALENTED, ever
curious and always learning,
it is not surprising that Peter
Dyroff has had such a long
and remarkable career in our
industry. He is also one of
the very few individuals in
the CI repping world who
excels equally at front-end
sales and creating leading
edge, customer-centric
back-end office solutions
that work. He always says he
benefited from several lucky
breaks, but in fact, luck has
little to do with the amount
of hard work and applied
creativity that paved his path
to success.
For example, having taught
himself to play keyboards as
a teen, by the time Dyroff
was a senior in high school
he was working weekends
as a gigging musician in area
bars, he was selling hifi in
a high-end stereo store in
Albuquerque (he had a set of
Magnepans in his bedroom)
and he worked part time
as a scientific glass blower
having followed an interest
and graduated in the subject
from a local technical school.
Attending college at University
of New Mexico, Dyroff
earned a degree in chemistry,
moved to Denver, and found
a job in industrial chemistry
cepro.com
building parts for NASA and
heart diagnostic machines.
Audio had always remained a
hobby and one day, Profound
Sound, the very high-end
audio store down the street,
was looking for help. Dyroff
tried it part time for 90 days
and, to the chagrin of his
parents, he loved it and decided
to leave chemistry.
During this time, Dyroff
had fallen in love with skiing
so when Armi Leonetti,
Mission Electronic's North
American Distributor, came
to town one day to conduct
an in-store training at
Profound, Dyroff took him
skiing in Vail, and halfway
up the chairlift ride Leonetti
offered him a job doing sales
training for Mission in North
America. So, in the mid-'80s,
he accepted the position,
moved to Toronto and spent
several years doing trainings
for stores across the U.S.
" We were all so passionate
about everything back
then. I met so many people
doing those trainings,
so many of whom became
lifelong friends, " he says.
" Plus, Mission taught me so
much - about how to set
up a basic system to make it
sound better and also how
to motivate underperforming
dealers by pairing them on
all-expense-paid factory visits
with Mission's superstar
dealers, a brilliant strategy. "
After a brief stint working
for Mission in England, Dyroff
returned to the U.S. and
accepted a terrific offer to
be a partner in a young New
Kevin Marty, CTO, RTI
IF IT'S POSSIBLE to be
" too humble, " Kevin Marty
is that person. As the chief
technology officer at RTI
for the past 29+ years,
Marty has been responsible
for creating some of
the most-used control
solutions in the industry,
yet he has trouble explaining what he does to people
outside the industry.
" I really don't even attempt to explain what I do, " he
chuckles. " I just try to explain to them that we make
their TV, Blu-ray player, or satellite dish easier to use. "
That is an understatement. Marty is the inventor of
RTI's Integration Designer software, a control solution
that started in the mid-1990s and is still going strong
today. Earlier this year the company introduced its first
major version launch in several years with many installer-friendly
features added in Integration Designer 11.
" We think it's the best solution in the industry. It's
really gratifying to see it being used 25 years later.
When you create something, you can't contemplate
all the different ways it can be used. It's really cool to
see all the applications, " he says.
Working side by side with RTI CEO John Demeskie,
Marty started working at RTI back in 1993 when
the company was less than a year old. He started
as a software intern before he had even earned his
Electrical Engineering degree from the University of
Minnesota.
" It was the early days of the industry, " he recalls.
" It was a fun industry to be in because of all the cool
products. Back then Minneapolis was a hotbed for
technology. I guess there isn't much to do outside
during the long winters. "
Marty and Demeskie initially worked out the offices
of a local integration company, which Marty credits as an
important exposure for him to see that side of the business.
From there, Marty rose through the software engineering
ranks until taking on the role of CTO in 2006.
" It's amazing to see how large the custom installation
market has become, " he says. " We started out in
the high end of the market and now consumers can
get a similar experience going to Best Buy and picking
up the stuff themselves. That is good in general because
it grows the market, but it makes it tougher for
companies like ours that are competing against that.
It's a double-edged sword. "
December 2022 CE Pro | 27
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CE Pro December 2022

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