User:Nadiakhorchidian/sandbox

= Marco Vienna =

Marco Gianni Vienna is a 23 year old entrepreneur and outdoorsman that lives in Boulder, CO. Marco is currently the Co-Founder and COO of SmartCapital, a fast growing financial technology startup that enables anyone to invest in venture capital.

Early Life & Education
Marco was born October 6, 1994 to his parents Rocky Vienna and Pamela Brodt in San Francisco. Rocky and Pam met while working for Apple. Marco spent the majority of his upbringing in Palo Alto and graduated from Palo Alto High School. Marco then decided to attend University of Colorado Boulder where he studied political science, economics and computer science. When Marco arrived in Boulder, he was passionate about technology, but also was also very interested in becoming a politician. While in college, Marco started working on his first few companies. During Marco’s first semester of his junior year of college in 2015, he decided to drop out of school.

SmartCapital
In 2018, Marco Vienna (COO), Paul Foley (CEO), and John Siladie (CTO) co-founded SmartCapital. Shortly after, Boulder Bits and Connector Capital invested in the company. The company is focused on enabling anyone, for the first time ever, to invest in venture capital funds. Paul Foley was previously the CEO of Augur, which is where Marco landed one of his first internships.

Boulder Bits
In 2017, Marco joined Boulder Bits, a startup studio, as the VP of Strategic Development. Here, Marco helped hiring new team members, supported portfolio companies, and helped ideate and vet new business ideas.

Shortly after Marco’s transition to Boulder Bits, he and the CEO of Boulder Bits, Jesse Lawrence, started to work on and validate a new business idea called SmartCapital. Marco was appointed as the COO of the company. Jesse continues to lead Boulder Bits and sits on the SmartCapital’s Board of Directors.

Kickfurther
In 2015, while still in college, Marco joined Kickfurther. Kickfurther enables people to fund inventory for scaling product businesses selling in stores such as Whole Foods, REI, and Walmart. In return for funding the inventory, people earn a predetermined profit when the inventory sells.

Shortly after Marco joined, the company started to experience a lot of growth. Marco, facing the intrigue and demands of a quickly scaling company, dropped out of school and joined full-time as the VP of Operations and Business Development. Marco conducted a majority of hiring as the team swelled from four people to twenty. He also assisted in raising Kickfurther’s Series A from the well-known venture capitalist, Tim Draper. During Vienna’s tenure, he brought in millions of dollars of deal flow and played a vital role in developing the product.

Marco got his start in technology with internships. He landed internships at QuinStreet (NASDAQ: QNST), Mosaic Sales Solutions, and Augur (acquired by Bounce X). Marco also started to experiment by founding his own companies called Sprout (a productivity application), Lucid Investments (crowdfunded stock market investments), Liftoff (a student led incubator) and The Emporium (an Amazon arbitrage business).

Accomplishments

 * In 2012, Marco was awarded the President’s Award for Community Service from Barack Obama.


 * In 2015, Kickfurther was invited to meet Sir Richard Branson on his private island as a finalist in his Extreme Tech Challenge.


 * In 2015, Kickfurther was called “the most novel new lender” by Inc.


 * In 2016, Kickfurther was named one of the top 50 most innovative startups in the world by G-Startup. The evaluation committee consisted of over 20 VC’s including Sequoia, Greylock, GGV, 500 Startups, Techstars, and Google.


 * In 2017, he was named one of six young founders to watch in Colorado.