Alex is the founder of Inoak (short for Innovate Oakland) a cluster of live/work loft and office buildings in Oakland, CA.. Prior to founding Inoak, Alex was a Managing Partner at the early stage advisory firm North Venture Partners (North). North works with early stage ventures providing services and tools to accelerate growth. North. also operates a small investment group called North Angels which is based in Oakland, CA.. In 2011 North Venture Partners sold assets of the software company North Social to Vocus, Inc.. Prior to the conception of North, Alex checked out of the NFL and started using his head for more than just a battering ram (always a far better student than an athlete). His past academic success, passion for learning, and the absence of repeated concussions, led to digital media industry conference speaking engagements, advisory board seats, and senior management roles at a handful of high-profile entertainment and technology ventures.. Most recently he served as Senior Vice President of Corporate & Business Development at Virgin Digital, a new media technology venture of Richard Branson's global Virgin empire. For Virgin, Alex built a portfolio of strategic software, hardware, content, and distribution partnerships designed to enable rapid, highly-efficient growth for the Virgin Digital music platform in both the UK and US markets. Before joining Virgin and almost two full years before iTunes launched, Alex co-founded a digital music company called Echo. Echo was a collaborative development platform for a digital media distribution system which was both politically backed and funded by the industry leaders in media retail including: Best Buy, Virgin, Borders, Tower Records, TransWorld Entertainment, Hastings, and Wherehouse.. Over the past 11 years Alex has built dozens of strategic partnerships, structured one merger, got married, helped launch seven new companies, closed two businesses, re-capitalized a failed dot com, graduated from Amherst College, re-structured over $2.6M in trade debt, built digital and physical media distribution strategies, bench pressed 500 pounds, pancaked NFL All-Pro Linebacker Ray Lewis, developed three joint ventures, had two children, and closed on six private equity placements.
