2018 ACG Cup followed by "Big Wins, Some Strikeouts, and Everything In Between" with Tom Wallace

Tom has been a technology entrepreneur since co-founding his first company at the age of 23. He has been involved in starting, investing, growing and building businesses ever since. Tom has also been an active tech angel investor for the past 25 years. His investments include Vector Solutions, Tribridge, Q-Link, Adjoy, Threshold-360, all the Florida Funders portfolio companies, and many others. Prior to joining Florida Funders, Tom served as CEO of Vector Solutions, a SaaS company in the online training compliance space, which he invested in in 2003. In 2016, Vector Solutions was purchased by Providence Equity Partners, a $40 billion private equity firm, giving Tom a 50x return on his investment.

Tom has been active in the Florida technology community for the past 25 years. He was one of the original founders of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum in 2001, and served as CEO for the first three years. Tom frequently speaks at tech conferences about entrepreneurship and raising capital. Over the course of his career he raised well over $100M - for his various companies - from venture capital and private equity firms. Tom often serves as a judge for pitch competitions as well as the E&Y’s “Entrepreneur of the Year” award. He has also been a finalist for this award twice himself.

Tom feels he has had some big wins, some strikeouts, and many ventures and investments that fell in between. He believes he’s learned much more from his failures than from his successes. For Tom, business is all about putting together the right team, setting big goals, staying laser focused, and being fanatical about product design and customer service. From an investment standpoint, he likes to say, “We bet as much on the jockey as the horse.” As such, Tom enjoys personally getting to know the founders of the companies that are vetted through Florida Funders.