David Matthews brings a wealth of relevant experience to Trailblazer Capital through his background as an entrepreneur, lead investor in emerging funds, venture capitalist, and venture philanthropist.
As an entrepreneur, David launched several successful start-ups including Intelecon, Green Mountain Dallas, and Toyscapes. Intelecon was a Dallas-based audio-visual services company that he and two co-founders grew from $0 to $22 million of annual revenue between 1991 and 1998. While overseeing the finance and administration of the business, he grew the company’s system integration and outsourcing business units from $0 to over $12 million of annual revenue. He achieved this growth by cultivating customer relationships with companies including Sterling Software, Dell, AMD, First USA, and Nortel. Beginning in 1994, the company was recognized in the “Dallas 100 Awards” for five straight years and was also recognized in the “Inc 500” in 1996. David’s exit from the business was achieved through a partial recapitalization of the company and a spin-off of its system integration and outsourcing business unit.
Green Mountain Dallas was an affinity marketing business that was built for the benefit of Green Mountain Energy and its shareholders. David developed a marketing strategy that targeted high-credit, high-usage, low-churn home owners in North Texas. After reducing the customer acquisition cost from $1,000 to under $300 and growing the acquisition rate from 10 to over 600 homes monthly between 2004 and 2005, he successfully integrated the business into the parent company.
As a lead investor in alternative investment funds, Matthews brought the initial capital together to back emerging managers in such funds as Red River Ventures (a private equity fund), INCAP Financial Group (a real estate development fund), Green Bull Fund (a clean energy fund), Elm Creek Partners (a buyout fund), and Trailblazer Capital (an early-stage venture fund in which Matthews is also a Managing Partner). Each of these funds are run by managers who have a wealth of experience in their respective fields and who required a lead investor in order to successfully raise their first fund.
As a venture capitalist, David has invested in a number of early-stage entrepreneurial ventures including PeopleAnswers, Urban Labs, Coquest Structured Products, Green Mountain Dallas, Avvantica, Zaadz, SensorLogic, Jumpstart Innovations, Variview Technology, SE2 Labs, Noofangle Media, GiANT Leaders, and Toyscapes.
As a venture philanthropist, David has developed innovative, entrepreneurial approaches for raising hard-to-get operating funds for philanthropic causes. With Green Mountain Dallas, he developed an affinity marketing model that cumulatively raised over $1 million for schools, churches, and other philanthropic causes through the grass-roots marketing of Green Mountain’s wind energy to small groups of homeowners. Toyscapes is an Oklahoma City-based company that designs and builds exhibits which raise funds for causes related to early-childhood education. The first exhibit, OKCityScape, which began construction in 2009, raised over $500,000 of underwriting and sponsorships during its first 6 months for the benefit of OKC Educare.
David has served on the boards of a number of not-for-profit organizations including Cedars Camps, KERA (the Dallas PBS affiliate), OKC Educare, and Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO). A 15-year member of the Dallas EO Chapter, he founded the Oklahoma Chapter of EO in 2007 and is currently serving in the role of Chapter President for the 2010 fiscal year. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Audio Engineering from Ohio State University in 1986.
