Drake Pruitt
Drake Pruitt has an extensive leadership background with rapid growth, high performance industries, and cultures. Currently based in Los Angeles, he began his career on Wall Street, working for Lehman Brothers and later for Montgomery Securities on technology IPOs. In 1994, Drake was part of the founding team of OneComm, Inc., a wireless carrier that built the present-day Nextel, Inc. He also served as VP of Sales for Aquantive Inc, the pioneer in massively scalable online ad delivery, purchased by Microsoft for $6B. From 2002 through 2008, Drake ran marketing, product development and was promoted to serve as CEO of Bocada, Inc, a venture-backed startup in data risk management.
In 2009, Drake joined Liberty spinoff, Ascent Media as SVP of business development to focus on digital product distribution; the company was sold for over $1B in 2011. In 2011, Drake founded Genius:Group — a venture studio combining financing and operating expertise to launch, grow and build business services and smart technologies. In August of 2012, Drake co-founded Lionsolver, Inc. (now part of LIONLab) to apply machine learning approaches to problems in health care and the industrial internet. Drake graduated with a bachelor’s of arts in economics and decision sciences cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently pursuing his master’s in informatics from Northwestern University. He is also a member of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and serves as board advisor to several technology startups.