About Chad

I’m one of those serial entrepreneurs. I love the process of creating something from nothing, building value and developing a culture where people love to work. I started my first company at the ripe age of 21 and never looked back. I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing, but that didn’t stop me.

The first company, TRACER Design, was an interactive advertising agency. At the time that meant we were hauling around these huge luggable computers that weighed 50 lbs, but hey…it had a color monitor! Producing ‘multimedia’ training materials, marketing info…you name it, we did it. I had the time of my life, working way too much and staying hopelessly optimistic. We were self-funded and profitable since inception.

One day we had the bright idea to produce a game on the WWW. We launched www.cyberhunt.com somewhere in 1995 I believe. Cyberhunt was sponsored by IBM and to the best of our knowledge; it was the first sponsored game on the Internet.

Cyberhunt spawned the idea to create Sandbox Entertainment, a company designed to build entertainment on the web. Sandbox became an early leader in online fantasy sports (which we subsequently lost and it still haunts me today). If only we had we realized what we built. It’s amazing how many people I still run into that played our games, even when they don’t know I was involved. Sandbox raised over $30 million in venture capital, that we successfully spent, and strategic partnerships were established with such heavyweights as CNN/Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports.com, Yahoo! (those Yahoo’s went on and built their own, they should have bought ours, it was better) and others, before the company regretfully merged with Wall St. Sports in 1999 where they successfully drove it into the ground.

I founded AdOn Network (formerly myGeek) in November of 1998. Our original concept was a personalized shopping service - Your own web geek to find things for you. After realizing the holes in our model and the .com bubble burst, which happened 2 days after we closed our first round of financing, we rapidly evolved our model. AdOn Network is now one of the largest ad networks on the web.

That brings me to current day. My latest adventure is with FetchBack, The Retargeting Company. We help you reconnect with your lost website visitors and have a great time doing it. My duties as Chief Retriever include the definition of the company's business strategy and cultivating business development opportunities– helping our interns into giant dog costumes is just a bonus!

I’m actively involved in the Internet and software development communities. I speak frequently at leading industry events and has been featured often on established news outlets, including: Forbes, TIME, CNNfn, NBC Nightly News (that was fun), The Red Herring, iMedia Connection, ADOTAS, The Arizona Republic, AZ Business Magazine, and many others, as well as being a published author with Paramount Publishing. Damn, I feel so important.

I’m an avid mountain biking, martial artist, snowboarder, scuba diver…basically anything physical and if it’s outdoors that’s even better.

I’m one of those serial entrepreneurs. I love the process of creating something from nothing, building value and developing a culture where people love to work. I started my first company at the ripe age of 21 and never looked back. I didn’t have a clue as to what I was doing, but that didn’t stop me.

The first company, TRACER Design, was an interactive advertising agency. At the time that meant we were hauling around these huge luggable computers that weighed 50 lbs, but hey…it had a color monitor! Producing ‘multimedia’ training materials, marketing info…you name it, we did it. I had the time of my life, working way too much and staying hopelessly optimistic. We were self-funded and profitable since inception.

One day we had the bright idea to produce a game on the WWW. We launched www.cyberhunt.com somewhere in 1995 I believe. Cyberhunt was sponsored by IBM and to the best of our knowledge; it was the first sponsored game on the Internet.

Cyberhunt spawned the idea to create Sandbox Entertainment, a company designed to build entertainment on the web. Sandbox became an early leader in online fantasy sports (which we subsequently lost and it still haunts me today). If only we had we realized what we built. It’s amazing how many people I still run into that played our games, even when they don’t know I was involved. Sandbox raised over $30 million in venture capital, that we successfully spent, and strategic partnerships were established with such heavyweights as CNN/Sports Illustrated, Fox Sports.com, Yahoo! (those Yahoo’s went on and built their own, they should have bought ours, it was better) and others, before the company regretfully merged with Wall St. Sports in 1999 where they successfully drove it into the ground.

I founded AdOn Network (formerly myGeek) in November of 1998. Our original concept was a personalized shopping service - Your own web geek to find things for you. After realizing the holes in our model and the .com bubble burst, which happened 2 days after we closed our first round of financing, we rapidly evolved our model. AdOn Network is now one of the largest ad networks on the web.

That brings me to current day. My latest adventure is with FetchBack, The Retargeting Company. We help you reconnect with your lost website visitors and have a great time doing it. My duties as Chief Retriever include the definition of the company's business strategy and cultivating business development opportunities– helping our interns into giant dog costumes is just a bonus!

I’m actively involved in the Internet and software development communities. I speak frequently at leading industry events and has been featured often on established news outlets, including: Forbes, TIME, CNNfn, NBC Nightly News (that was fun), The Red Herring, iMedia Connection, ADOTAS, The Arizona Republic, AZ Business Magazine, and many others, as well as being a published author with Paramount Publishing. Damn, I feel so important.

I’m an avid mountain biking, martial artist, snowboarder, scuba diver…basically anything physical and if it’s outdoors that’s even better.