Entrepreneur, Investor, Sports Tech Venture Capitalist.

The Highlights

• Managing General Partner, BOA Ventures — investing in Team Tech and Fan Tech across professional sports
• Former professional athlete: 2nd in the U.S. Olympic trials in rowing (single scull), three years racing World Cup, world record holder
• Founded dwinQ, a live-event social technology company that powered real-time fan engagement at the London Olympics for clients including Facebook, Twitter, Formula 1, and Nissan
• Founded ODIN technologies, whose EpicMix system — born from RFID work out of MIT's Auto-ID Center — is still used at 40+ ski resorts worldwide
• Chair Emeritus, YPO Sports & Entertainment Network
• Wall Street Journal #5 best-selling author of Fear Is Fuel
• Creator of the BOODA Doctrine (Believe → Observe → Orient → Decide → Act), detailed in The Founder's Creed
• 5x founder, including ServerVault — one of the first cloud hosting companies, $30M+ raised, sold in 2002 — and ODIN technologies, sold in 2012 after winning the Dept. of Commerce's Innovation Award and 30+ patents
• 60+ startup investments, including multiple Y Combinator batches, Flexport, ShipBob, RapidAPI, and Gecko Robotics
• Fellow, U.S. National War College
• Commercially rated aerobatic pilot; winner of the Race Across America (RAAM); first to attempt cycling the Seven Summits
• MBA, University of Virginia's Darden School; BS, University of New Hampshire
• Splits time between Boston, Milan, and Chamonix, France

The Deets

I went to UVA for graduate school after my Olympic year, figuring nobody hires a dumb jock. I got into data centers during a 1997 internship and ended up running the East Coast high-tech center of excellence for the world's largest real estate company, serving clients like Microsoft, Computer Associates, and Oracle. I realized data centers hadn't changed in a generation — and that with the internet, clients no longer needed to own their own hardware and software.

In 1999 I founded ServerVault, one of the first cloud hosting companies. It raised over $30 million in venture capital and debt, ran proprietary data centers in the U.S. and Europe, and patented new ways of making data centers more secure and efficient. It sold in 2002 to a private equity firm; its platform is still the basis for one of today's largest cloud providers. We were ahead of our time.

In 2003 I adapted technology out of MIT to found ODIN technologies, a pioneer in RFID. ODIN became the leader in RFID software and services, won the U.S. President's Innovation Award, and was granted more than 30 patents — including a machine learning platform we built in 2003, my first real foray into AI. ODIN won some of the largest RFID contracts of the era, for the Department of Defense, Airbus, Johnson & Johnson, Mayo Clinic, and Vail Resorts, where we built EpicMix — a system still running in 40+ ski areas today. ODIN sold in 2012.

In 2013 I founded dwinQ, a live-event social media company that enabled real-time fan interaction at the London Olympics, with clients like Facebook, Twitter, Molson, Formula 1, and Nissan.

In 2020 I released Fear Is Fuel: The Surprising Power to Find Passion, Purpose, and Peak Performance, which hit #5 on the Wall Street Journal Best Seller list. I've since done two TEDx talks and was the top-rated speaker at Google Talks Europe in 2017. I was also fortunate to hold a fellowship at the U.S. National War College in Washington, D.C., and I help moderate YWhales, a Young Presidents' Organization (YPO) community of verified CEOs working in blockchain.

Along the way I've developed 13 patents, from RFID technology to immersion cooling. I finished 2nd in the U.S. Olympic trials in rowing (single scull), and I've taken on a handful of bizarre, painful endurance challenges — climbing and biking down Mont Blanc, climbing and biking Kilimanjaro, racing the Iditarod Trail Invitational in Alaska, and winning the Race Across America (RAAM).

Why I Lead a Sports Tech Fund

Professional sports is a $700B+ global industry still largely running on spreadsheets — fewer than 15% of pro teams have a dedicated CIO, CTO, or CISO. I've spent two decades building the infrastructure other industries take for granted: cloud, RFID, live-event social technology. BOA Ventures exists to bring that same operating discipline to the two areas of sports technology I believe matter most — Team Tech, the internal systems that run a franchise, and Fan Tech, the systems that grow it.

How I evaluate a company — the BOODA Doctrine: Believe in the category, Observe real signal from inside team operations, Orient using an operator's network, Decide the way I'd run the company myself, then Act — capital plus hands-on support to accelerate growth.

Angel Investments

A selection of companies I've backed personally over the years, across multiple Y Combinator batches and beyond.