Long-form Bio

My name's Zack. I'm an entrepreneur and private investor trying to build multi-generational wealth.

During the day, I co-own a profitable, bootstrapped enterprise software company. We have two main lines of business: (1) data analytics apps for small and medium-sized businesses in a niche market and (2) long-term contract, mission-critical software for a large multi-national OEM.

I also started Gridiron AI with a couple of friends back in 2018 as a fun side project. We've developed machine learning models that predict fantasy football scores and NFL game outcomes with elite (though imperfect) accuracy.

I grew up next door to a hedge fund manager and was inspired from an early age to learn how to invest. He's mentored me over the years and to this day we still share investment ideas.

I started managing my first account when I was a teenager during the GFC crash. It was a great time to start investing and I got lucky early by buying stock in two of my favorite companies, Netflix and Amazon.

I source ideas from a variety of places. Most of the time, I find companies organically either through screens or combing through companies A-Z. I’m also a member of Value Investors Club and MicroCapClub and consider those to be valuable parts of my process. 

My dad started a small business in the construction industry with my grandpa a few years before I was born. I spent a lot of time growing up on job sites and at his office in Denver. My first job was doing accounts payable/receivable, but as I grew older I got to help with more of the fun stuff, like demolition and driving dump trucks. 

My dad inspired me to pursue building businesses—when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d tell them I wanted to own a company like my dad. The first business I started was with a friend in elementary school. We shaved the paint off of wooden pencils, carved intricate designs into them, and then sold the finished product at recess. Eventually, we started taking custom orders to include people's initials, favorite animals, etc. We sold them for $5-10 each and I had a blast doing it. 

In middle school and high school, I became obsessed with video games. The first time I made money off of gaming was at a Madden tournament when I was probably thirteen or so. It was nothing near the level of competitions that happen these days, but there was a $500 prize and people flew in from out of state to compete. I played as the Broncos, which everyone gave me flack for because they were not one of the highest-ranked teams. Long story short, I ended up beating a middle-aged guy from California to win the tournament. He was not a gracious loser.

I always loved beating campaigns, so I got a subscription to a site that was like the old Netflix where you could rent games and they’d mail them back and forth as you finished (was it called Red Alert?). Over the course of a few years, I climbed into the top 10 on the Xbox Gamerscore leaderboard. Then, for the first time, someone offered to buy my account. I said no, but that got me thinking about ways to fill the demand for accounts with high gamerscrores. 

As I did research online, I read on forums that you could disconnect your Xbox hard drive, hook it up to a computer, and copy the achievement files between accounts. I ordered a SATA cable, made a new Xbox account, and figured out how to copy some of the achievements from my account into the new one. I then listed it on Ebay and sold it for $250. I’m not sure how many accounts I sold, but it was quite a few. I had options on Ebay to customize the games beaten. Some of the accounts sold for upwards of $500. This is the first project that got me interested in computers. 

I studied applied mathematics in college and graduated from CU Engineering with a 3.98 GPA (damn you freshmen lit, it could have been a 4.0!). In my junior year, I started working at a VC-backed tech startup in Boulder. I ended up working there nearly full time my senior year, as I only had three courses per semester, and then I continued on to a salaried Data Scientist role after I graduated.

I met a lot of awesome people at this startup who continue to be good friends to this day. We had a successful exit and were purchased by one of the richest families in the world. It was an awesome experience to have at such a young age and I enjoyed it, but I also knew the VC-backed startup culture was not for me. Growing up around a small business that my family depended on, I did not understand how you could call it a business if you weren’t at least trying to make a profit.

This inspired me to get into profitable software, which is where I still work full time and described above. I’ve worked fully remotely since late 2015, which has enabled us to travel a lot, including a two-year stint where we lived nomadically all over the US and Europe with our dog. That was quite the adventure.

On the personal side, I’m married and we have two sons, one human who was born in December 2023, and one canine who we treat like a human. I have a large family that is almost entirely located on the Front Range of Colorado. My siblings and cousins were some of my best friends growing up and continue to be to this day. Family is very important to me and it feels surreal that my wife and I have started the next generation. 

In my free time, I enjoy cooking, playing board games, writing fiction, hiking, and traveling. 

Enjoy the journey,

Zack