Paul Bragiel (born 15 September 1977 in Chicago, Illinois) is an internet entrepreneur and currently a managing partner of Bragiel Brothers.

Early life

Bragiel, the oldest child of Mary and Walter Bragiel, was raised in

Mt. Prospect Mount Prospect is a village in Elk Grove and Wheeling Townships in Cook County, Illinois, about northwest of downtown Chicago, and approximately 4 miles north of O'Hare International Airport. As of the 2020 census, the village had a total ...

and South Barrington, Illinois. In the late 1990s, he was involved in the demoscene.

Ventures

Bragiel graduated from University of Illinois in 1999. Shortly after graduating he founded his first company,

Paragon 5 Paragon may refer to: Places * Paragon, Indiana, a town in the United States *Paragon, Nebraska, former community in the United States *The Paragon, Bath, a Georgian street in the Walcot area of Bath * The Paragon, Blackheath, London, built by Mi ...

, with offices in Chicago and Poland. In 2004, he founded the first location-based social network,

Meetro Meetro was a multi-network social messenger with location-based services (LBS). It was compatible with AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, MSN Messenger, GTalk, XMPP, and ICQ. Meetro's features made it useful for meeting people with similar ...

. In 2008, he founded Lefora, which was sold to Crowdgather in the summer of 2010. In 2010, he launched i/o Ventures, a seed fund and accelerator based in San Francisco. In 2012, he launched three more technology-focused seed funds. Savannah Fund (

Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov ...

) and Golden Gate Ventures ( Southeast Asia) were created to foster entrepreneurship in those regions. Gamefounders ( Eastern Europe) invests in companies building gaming-related products. In 2015, he launched Presence Capital, a $10m venture fund investing in early-stage

virtual reality (VR) Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), edu ...

and augmented reality (AR) companies. In 2019, he launched SMOK Ventures, a $50m venture fund investing in early-stage companies in Central & Eastern Europe. He travels around the world to give lectures on startups and is an advisor to governments on their technology and entrepreneurship policy including Philippines, Singapore, Brazil and Tanzania.

Olympics

In 2013, Bragiel trained in

cross-country skiing Cross-country skiing is a form of skiing where skiers rely on their own locomotion to move across snow-covered terrain, rather than using ski lifts or other forms of assistance. Cross-country skiing is widely practiced as a sport and recreation ...

in Finland with a view to competing in the 2014 Sochi Olympics under the

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

n flag. In order to participate, Bragiel obtained Colombian citizenship by presidential decree and was soon globally addressed as the man who was hacking his way into the Olympics. For the

2016 Summer Olympics The 2016 Summer Olympics ( pt, Jogos Olímpicos de Verão de 2016), officially the Games of the XXXI Olympiad ( pt, Jogos da XXXI Olimpíada) and also known as Rio 2016, was an international multi-sport event held from 5 to 21 August 20 ...

, Bragiel joined the Tonga delegation as team attaché. During the

2018 Winter Olympics , nations = 93 , athletes = 2,922 (1,680 men and 1,242 women) , events = 102 in 7 sports (15 disciplines) , opening = , closing = , opened_by = President Moon Jae-in , cauldron = Kim Yun-a , stadium = Pyeongchang Olympic Stadium , winte ...

, Bragiel served as a coach for both the

and Tonga cross-country ski teams. He is noted as being the first person to participate in the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for two different countries in the same Olympics.The venture capitalist making Olympic dreams come true
''CNN'', February 24, 2018

References

External links

''Wall Street Journal'' article about Bragiel's venture fund i/o Ventures

''TechCrunch'' interview with Bragiel and Ashwin Navin, founding partners of i/o Ventures''Forbes'' article on Savannah Fund''Pando Daily'' article on Golden Gate Ventures launch''Wall Street Journal'' article about Bragiel's Olympic questBragiel's official fan page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bragiel, Paul 21st-century American businesspeople University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni Living people 1977 births American people of Polish descent Demosceners People from Mount Prospect, Illinois People from South Barrington, Illinois