My Early Life
Born in London, emigrated to the US in 1991.
Son of Paul and Susan (and Step-mother Barbara), brother to Paul, John and Alex.
Grandson of Group Captain Peter Matthews, DFC Queens Commendation. Grandad was Squadron leader, Spitfire squadron 1 - (first in the air in the Battle of Britain during WW II).
I made these works to tell his story to my children and in his memory. I miss him still today.
I Grew up in London, England before coming to the U.S. to attend University.
My 3 Brothers.
My Grandfather, Peter Matthews.
My Education
Don't forget that "College' in the UK actually refers to a high-school.
1984-1990
Marlborough College, UK
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Team Captain, Varsity Soccer, 1989
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3 A-Levels (Politics Classics, Geography)
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12 O-Levels
Boston University
1991-1995
BS Finance.
BA, History.
AXA Fraternity.
Marlborough College, Marlborough, UK.
Work History and Career
A Summary of the major chapters in my career to date.
$180M Across 4 Rounds
FazeClan
Post Acquisition Integration lead
2019
FazeClan is the leading E-sports organization in the world today. Comprised of businesses that manage teams, brands, e-commerce, Content & licensing. The brand is a household name amongst young teens with multi-platform reach in the hundreds of millions.
Wanderset was merged into FazeClan in 2019 to power commerce channels engaging with its network reach of over 500M active users.
Financing:
$1.8M Series Seed.
Wanderset Inc
Co-Founder and COO
2017-2019
Youth Culture E-Com platform publishing, the latest in street fashion from hundreds of Brands (their APIs) delivering fashion to millions of young fashion forward teens. This was Karmaloop without the inventory risk.
Financing:
$9M Series A Financing from Avalon Ventures, Rick Levandov and Brady Bohrmann
Pingup Inc
Co-Founder and CEO
2012-2016
Local Commerce API aggregating local availability from millions of SMBs through scheduling software providers and powering native booking buttons on major publishing properties like YP, Yahoo, Facebook and Google Search. We were a local bookings GDS in the mould of Sabre (that powered kayak, travelocity and dozens of other marketplaces).
Financing:
2001-2007: Friends and Family funded (I invested $100K at the time).
Karmaloop
Founding Member, VP Business Development
2001-2006
Early Entrant to street fashion E-com, bringing breaking trends to the masses unbounded by physical location. To this day, the company is seen as the pioneer in this $50b market.
At its peak, Karmaloop had an annual revenue run rate of $180M and over 300 employees before an epic collapse in 2011.
Financing:
$30 Billion. (circa 2000)
NASD: CMGi
CMGi
Senior Analyst
1997-2000.
Pioneering Investor and operator of over 97 companies at the dawn of the commercial Internet. At its height, NASD: CMGi and its @Ventures affiliates and wholly owned and operated companies had a market capitalization of $30 Billion.
Financing:
Undisclosed
My Family and I.
Elephant Inc
Principal
2021-Current
My Studio for creative work, consulting relationships, angel investments and all manor of new tinkering around technology themes i am obsessed with. You can read more about what these are here.
Financing:
Achievements, Skills, Proficiencies
A random collection of achievements and skills with a few interests thrown in for fun...
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6 US Patents Awarded
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National Tennis Champion, Bermuda, 1986.
Hard Skills
Languages:
- Swift / C ++
- Graph QL
- Node.js
- French
Tools:
- Xcode (VisionOS, RealityKit, ARKit, SwiftUI...)
- IOS App Store / Apple Developer tools
- Firebase
- Lottie
- Mapbox
- Chat GBT 4.0 CLI
- Stripe API
- Wix Velo
- AWS (SNS, Pinpoint, RDS...)
- Unreal Engine
Software
- Figma
- Sketch
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Lightroom
- Photoshop
- Wondershare
- Filmora
- Presentory
Soft Skills
Instead of a descriptive list, i have created a frameworks Repo of sorts that helps to show some of these skills in action. These frameworks are the output of mine and several others collective experience.l
Proficiencies
Spray Painting. Wood Carving, HTML!
US Patents:
#10205685, #10205687
In 2016 i (along with my Co-Authors) was awarded 6 patents related to a unique family of innovations in mobile messaging.
One of the most rewarding experiences of my life was that i got to work alongside Mr. Bruce Sunstein of Sunstein LLP. Bruce is one of the most highly renowed patent attorney's today.
A graduate of MIT and the co-author of 1,000s of patents from the Segway to Biomedical Devices, Knee replacement innovations and more, Bruce is most importantly one of the nicest human beings i have ever had the privilege to meet.
Investments
My startup investments have involved both solo ventures and collaborations with my partner, Lindsay.
These days, I'm particularly drawn to opportunities where I can combine investing with a hands-on technical role. While some venture capitalists rely on spreadsheets analysis to assess risk, I gain the most conviction by diving into the code itself.
It's this technical perspective where I feel most comfortable evaluating an investment's potential.
Are you seeking a technical Co-Founder for your amazing idea?
Writing and Perspectives
Charitable Endeavors
