Mark Collier

I live in the greatest city on earth (Austin, Texas) and enjoy BBQ, live music, and hanging out with my kiddos (Zoe and Sage) and my wife Dianna.

I’ve been geeking out with technology since discovering the Apple II in elementary school, then getting a Coleco Adam as my first PC (we couldn’t afford an Apple!).  Since then I’ve probably built over a 1000 PCs by hand, mostly in the late 80’s and early 90s working for small mom and pop PC shops around Austin.  I went through a hard core gamer phase in the 90’s (pre-kids!) spending about half my waking hours trying to blow Jeff Maxwell’s head off in the early days of virtual worlds inside of Doom and Quake.  I think we had the first home network in San Antonio, which was of course dedicated to gaming.  We were supposed to be in class at Trinity University but I think we learned more just hacking and mastering the art of the rocket launcher physics. I did pick up a degree studying Economics (another form of geekery, or perhaps nerdom?).

These days I just hack around on my own hardware at home (most recently building a Hackintosh), keeping the home PC collection to under a dozen to keep the electric bill in check and the wife from going insane.  Of course, I’m also a gadget freak, and after going through 5 or 6 Treos I’m only on my second Blackberry.  iPhone 3G will be next, naturally. purchased summer 2008

I worked at Dell for 7 years (two tours of duty) and gradually moved from technical roles to marketing and then on to business development, also moving away from HW and towards software and services along the way.  I joined Musicmatch in 2004, realizing my dream of returning to a much smaller private company to escape big company hell.  This utopia lasted exactly 3 weeks and 1 day before we were bought by Yahoo!, ‘doh!

I’ve been enjoying the ride, though, working for Yahoo! for 5 years doing BD deals with amazingly talented folks like Ian Rogers (now CEO of Topspin), Steve Raymond (now VP at Flux), Dave Goldberg (now EIR at Benchmark).   Digital Music was my focus for the first 3 years, and for the past year or so I’ve focused on social media, social networking, web 2.0, and more recently Mobile for all of our Media properties (think Music, Movies, TV, Sports, News, Finance…)  Basically I try to go where the geek river flows, and love to help build new businesses in emerging industries.

Building partnerships and defining new business models is what I do day to day and I love it.  I’ve been really fortunate to work with some of the coolest start ups…  RockYou, iLike, Project Playlist, Bebo, Skyrock…

Update July 2009: The river brought me to Rackspace as VP of Business Development and you can read more about it here.

I’m not sure how I’ve been able to scratch the entrepreneurial itch from within Fortune 500 companies, but I think it has something to do with a total disregard for processes or conventional thinking.  Or, as I like to say, “showing the process the respect it deserves”.  (I’ve been acused of being a smart ass, which I of course vehemently deny).  My Linked in profile has the basics covered, and of course I’m active on twitter and friendfeed and facebook and all of the other social services..  I think most of them are on my Blog Log profile.

When I’m not geeking out or hacking technology I like to watch the Rockets and smoke BBQ (preferrably on my New Braunfels smoker, which I don’t mind modding too).  I make a mean smoked Salmon or the more traditional Texas brisket, sausage, or a pork tenderloin.

I guess I should add that I’m a true believer in Freedom and am thus a card carrying member of the ACLU.  I also have some pretty strong opinions about U.S. foreign policy, which is why you’ll find Antiwar.com in my Blogroll.  War is the ultimate form of Tyranny, so I’m not a big fan of people that start those.  Don’t worry, I’m not a Democrat or a Republican so if you find either of those distasteful, we’ve already got something in common.

If you’re a geek or just enjoy a 12 hour smoked Brisket, drop me a line when you’re in Austin.  Mark at [this domain you're reading right now]. I often go by “sparkycollier” on the interwebs, and here’s why.

Mark

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