stanford-football
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Ryan Gaertner and the art of handing off the ball
He built DubClub while earning a Stanford MBA, then handed the CEO role to his cofounder. Now at Memories.ai, Ryan Gaertner is bringing lessons from football, creator businesses, and a very busy Google Sheet to a different field.
Derek Belch
Derek Belch is the founder and CEO of STRIVR, the enterprise virtual reality training company he spun out of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab in 2014. A former Stanford kicker turned graduate assistant football coach, Belch built a VR prototype to give quarterbacks mental reps off the field, then pivoted the company from sports to the Fortune 1000. STRIVR has since trained more than a million workers in VR for clients including Walmart, Verizon, Bank of America and the NFL, and has raised roughly $87.5 million through a Series B.
Lewis Burik
Lewis Burik is the co-founder and CEO of DubClub, a Chicago-based platform that connects amateur sports bettors with vetted professional handicappers, or 'cappers,' through subscriptions delivered by text, email, and Discord. A former Stanford inside linebacker who walked on to the Cardinal, Burik started DubClub in 2021 with two college teammates after watching a friend struggle to find trustworthy betting picks online. The company has since grown to roughly 1.5 million fans, crossed $95M+ in lifetime GMV, and raised a $7.5M Series A led by Renegade Partners in 2024, turning a fragmented corner of the creator economy into a profitable marketplace.