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The Team That Sells You Its Enemies' Teeth
How a franchise named after a kids' movie became a $1.4 billion bet on live sports, youth hockey, and 100 acres of Orange County real estate.
Ian Asher
He was the first DJ to go big on TikTok, then a French singer's decade-old song became his loudest moment. Ian Asher on trusting his gut, ignoring the noise, and building a career that outlasts the algorithm.
Vistify, Inc
Vistify, Inc is a Santa Ana, California restaurant-technology company whose flagship platform, vMenu, turns static digital menu boards into centrally controlled, software-defined menus for multi-unit and quick-service restaurant brands. The cloud platform lets operators design menus with a drag-and-drop Menu Builder, push changes to thousands of screens in real time, sync pricing with point-of-sale systems in under 30 seconds, and monitor what is actually displaying across every location. Founded in 2015 as Embed Digital and rebranded to Vistify in March 2025, the company serves brands including Craveworthy Brands, WaBa Grill, Urban Plates and Urbane Cafe, and is led by CEO Michael Mathieu.
Todd Watts
Todd Watts is the co-founder and CEO of PatientFi, an Irvine, California fintech that lets patients pay for elective and out-of-pocket healthcare in monthly installments at the point of care. Since starting the company in 2017, he has built a platform that has helped roughly 320,000 patients qualify for more than $3 billion in care across aesthetics, fertility, dentistry, ophthalmology and audiology, reaching a $140 million annual revenue run rate and 130 employees. A former J.P. Morgan investment banker with a Yale MBA, Watts was named an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2024 Pacific Southwest winner.
Taylor Holiday
Taylor Holiday is the founder and CEO of Common Thread Collective (CTC), one of the most respected eCommerce growth agencies in the DTC (direct-to-consumer) space, serving 230+ brands totaling $2.3B+ in annual online revenue. A former minor league baseball player drafted by the New York Yankees, Holiday went from a 100-square-foot office above a bakery in Old Towne Orange, California to building a fully remote agency of 70-150+ people. He is also a partner at 4x400, a brand acquisition holding company, and one of the most influential voices on Twitter/X in the eCommerce world, known for contrarian takes, deep analytical frameworks, and a relentless focus on profitable growth.
Sadie Jean
Sadie Jean Wilcox is an independent indie-pop singer-songwriter from Tustin, California, who turned a dorm-room song written as revenge on a cheating ex into a viral TikTok phenomenon. Her 2021 debut single 'WYD Now?' went Gold in the US and Silver in the UK, earned 100M+ Spotify streams, and went so viral mid-finals that she dropped out of NYU's prestigious Clive Davis Institute to pursue music full-time. Since then she has released the EP 'Simple Like 17' (2023) and her debut studio album 'Early Twenties Torture' (2025), toured with Rod Wave, Snow Patrol, Cian Ducrot, and Lauren Spencer Smith, and built a devoted fanbase through her 'Jeanmail' newsletter - all while remaining fully independent.