From the Oakland Raiders to a nationwide AI company.
Rick Brown has spent his career learning how people decide, first in premium seats and corporate partnerships, now with predictive data.
Reading a market, courtside
Rick started in sports and entertainment: Manager of Premium Sales for the Oakland Raiders from 2006, then premium seating and corporate partnerships for Maloof Sports & Entertainment. Over roughly 15 years in the industry he built brand partnerships for companies including Citibank, Intel, Acura and Sierra Nevada.
Building MarketStorm, without VC
In 2018 he co-founded MarketStorm with Carole Lawson, first as CMO and, since 2022, as CEO. MarketStorm finds people at the very beginning of a big decision and reaches them before they search. It has worked with more than 700 clients and generated over 350,000 conversions in the last two years, entirely without Silicon Valley or Wall Street backing.
Teaching what he learned
Since 2020 Rick has been a guest lecturer on entrepreneurial leadership at Harvard University Extension School, speaking on the realities of building and scaling early-stage companies.
What he'd do differently
“So in business, you make a lot of mistakes, right? … I think I would have just chosen to do everything faster, right?”
Milestones
- 2006
Oakland Raiders
Manager, Premium Sales.
- 2008
Maloof Sports & Entertainment
Premium Seating Manager, then Manager, Corporate Partnerships.
- 2018
Co-founds MarketStorm
With Carole Lawson, as CMO & co-founder. No venture capital, then or since.
- 2020
Harvard University Extension School
Guest lecturer on entrepreneurial leadership.
- 2022
CEO, MarketStorm
Leads the company he co-founded.
“What we do is we capture people that are at the very beginning of the thought process about any type of purchase or sort of big decision.”
Rick Brown on StrategyCast
