Meet Zack Oliver | Founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Zack Oliver and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Zack, what was your thought process behind starting your own business?
At this point in my career, I have started a few ventures. I am currently the Co-Founder and CFO of Matchpoint, a NIL (Name, Image, and Likeness) marketplace that generates contracts and processes payments for college athletes. About a year ago, I moved to LA from New York, and found myself lacking a community of like minded people, so I figured I would make my own. When I lived in New York, I was a part of a group where founders would get together for free workout classes that were sponsored by a VC in the city. I thought to myself, how can I replicate that model in LA with more conversation, resource sharing, and without the need of a sponsor to start. My friend, Neema Bardi (Founder of Atllas), invited me to a dinner in the early months of my time in LA. At the table, I sat across from 4 other founders who I had never met. Within minutes it felt like we were all best friends swapping stories and offering a helping hand with each others businesses. This was the first spark for Founder’s Table, but I wanted to try again. Maybe the first dinner was a fluke. The next time, I organized my own dinner and invited other founders who I had met in LA. I left the second dinner the same way I had left the first, feeling a sense of community and accomplishment. And it wasn’t just me, as we were leaving, the other founders who had joined told me they felt the same and that they wanted to be invited back the next time I organized a dinner. With a little more affirmation that founders in LA were hungry for this sense of community, I was forced to ask myself why? LA is supposedly the city with the largest number of founders in America. What non-founders may not understand is that the founder journey is a lonely one. People assume all founders live this glamorous life where they are making tons of money and have more friends than they know what to do with. In reality, it’s often the complete opposite. Most of the founders I meet are heads down working on their businesses night and day. In the current market, fundraising has been hard to come by, so founders are running as lean as they can until they can try to get funding. Then once/if they get funding, they get to hire a bunch of teammates, and that doesn’t come without it’s own stresses and sense of responsibility. People look up to the founder and expect them to have all the answers, when most of the time they are figuring it out along the way as well. A big difference is they don’t have a boss they can talk to about it. They are the boss. They are expected to have the answers. Enter Founder’s Table, a couple hours a week with no VCs to impress, no budgets to approve, and no judgement for talking through the struggles that every founder goes through. Founders can join a free community, and are able to swap stories, share resources, make helpful introductions, and most importantly make genuine connection. After four months, dozens of dinners, and hundreds of conversations, Founder’s Table has grown to over 350 founders in LA, and I hope we can continue to grow and build a lasting community.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I grew up in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where football was king, and I always had my goals set to be a professional athlete. I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to play football at Northwestern where I played Quarterback for 5 years, and where I met my amazing wife, Shelton. After undergrad, I attended Kellogg School of Management where I still set on trying my luck with the NFL. After attending minicamps with the Ravens, Redskins (now Commanders), and Bears without much success, I decided to hang up my cleats and pivot into a career in finance. My first job out of Kellogg was at JP Morgan in Chicago where I worked in private wealth management. One year later, my wife (then girlfriend) was accepted in to law school at Columbia in New York, so we packed our bags and said goodbye to Chicago. After months of networking in New York, I landed a job as an equities trader at Citigroup. Our desk was dedicated to SPACs and Merger Arbitrage. Over the next 2-3 years I was determined to be a sponge and learn as much as I possibly could and I did just that. Enter COVID-19. Similar to everyone else in the world, the banking world went remote, and while the flexibility was nice, Wall Street wasn’t quite the same when you are sitting in a makeshift laundry room/office. This was the first time I started to consider becoming a founder and was interested in learning more about start ups. My brother, Brian, and I began chatting more often about different opportunities. We formed a small family office and began making small investments early stage tech companies. After a few months, we began discussing building a start up of our own. Brian (12 years older than myself) was also a college quarterback and had a passion for sports. During this time, the NCAA was under heavy pressure to make a change in regards to their rules surrounding the compensation of college athletes, namely the rule regarding the ability for an athlete to monetize his or her Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL). Brian assembled a team of experts and we went head first into the world of NIL and built a platform called Matchpoint designed to help brands and athletes discover, communicate and transact with one another. After the business started to gain some traction, I decided to leave Citi and work on Matchpoint full time. My wife and I lived in New York for another 2 years where she began her career as a lawyer and I was fully dedicated to building Matchpoint. After some time, Shelton and I decided it was time to leave New York for some sunshine. We moved to Beverly Hills in April of 2023. In addition to building Matchpoint and Founder’s Table, I also advise a few start ups in LA and look forward to connecting with more.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Still being relatively new to the city, I’m still trying to find answers to this question myself. If friends were to come in town, during the day we would probably hike Los Leones, Runyon, or the Hollywood sign. For lunch/brunch we may go to Soho house or stop somewhere on Sunset Blvd like “The Butcher, The Baker, The Cappuccino Maker” or “Sunset Tower”. There is a good chance we also meet friends in Venice for a little beach volleyball. When dinner time comes, we always start our evening at Wally’s in Beverly Hills for some wine and appetizers. Historically dinner has taken us 1 of 2 places. If its a casual night, we will probably go to Night + Market on Sunset (our favorite Thai restaurant). If we are looking for more of a scene we will probably go to Casa Madera or The Edition.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’m a firm believer that all of us are a product of the people who have helped us get to where we are. There are two people who I’d love to shoutout though there are dozens who have helped me along the way, and I will be forever grateful for their guidance.

The first and most important person in my life is my wife, Shelton Oliver. Shelton’s love and inspiration is what keeps me moving forward. She has a unique tenacity and ability to hold people accountable that is truly unmatched. She pushes me to live outside of my comfort zone and that has opened my eyes to an entire world of possibilities that I would have never known existed. She is also always the smartest person in the room, and always seems to comprehend complex topics (like corporate legal structures) in a way that baffles me.

The second is my brother, Brian Oliver. Brian has always been a role model of mine since I can remember. He and I have a unique brotherly relationship given that he is about 12 years older than I am. In many ways he was just as much of a parental figure to me as a brother. Brian is truly a self made man. He worked his way from being a waiter and hotel manager up to being the CEO of a multi hundred million dollar business with nothing more than his determination and ability to read people. He likely deserves his own article (if not novel) to tell his full story, but so many of the successes I have had in my life, I owe to him and what he taught me. For that, I’ll be forever grateful.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zackoliver_10/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zackoliver1/

Image Credits
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