Paul Bragiel (born 15 September 1977 in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

) 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 and

South Barrington, Illinois South Barrington is a residential suburb in Cook County, Illinois, United States, south of Barrington. Per the 2020 census, the population was 5,077. South Barrington is a wealthy suburb of Chicago. It is the location of the famous megachurch W ...

. In the late 1990s, he was involved in the

demoscene The demoscene is an international computer art subculture focused on producing demos: self-contained, sometimes extremely small, computer programs that produce audiovisual presentations. The purpose of a demo is to show off programming, visual ...

Ventures

Bragiel graduated from

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

in 1999. Shortly after graduating he founded his first company, Paragon 5, with offices in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

and

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

. 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) and Golden Gate Ventures (

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...

) were created to foster entrepreneurship in those regions. Gamefounders (

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russia, whic ...

) invests in companies building gaming-related products. In 2015, he launched Presence Capital, a $10m venture fund investing in early-stage virtual reality (VR) 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 The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

and

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

Olympics

In 2013, Bragiel trained in cross-country skiing in

Finland Finland ( fi, Suomi ; sv, Finland ), officially the Republic of Finland (; ), is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It shares land borders with Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of B ...

with a view to competing in the 2014

Sochi Olympics The 2014 Winter Olympics, officially called the XXII Olympic Winter Games (russian: XXII Олимпийские зимние игры, XXII Olimpiyskiye zimniye igry) and commonly known as Sochi 2014 (russian: Сочи 2014), was an international ...

under the Colombian 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, Bragiel joined the Tonga delegation as team

attaché In diplomacy, an attaché is a person who is assigned ("to be attached") to the diplomatic or administrative staff of a higher placed person or another service or agency. Although a loanword from French, in English the word is not modified accord ...

. During the

2018 Winter Olympics The 2018 Winter Olympics ( ko, 2018년 동계 올림픽, Icheon sip-pal nyeon Donggye Ollimpik), officially the XXIII Olympic Winter Games (french: Les XXIIIes Jeux olympiques d'hiver; ko, 제23회 동계 올림픽, Jeisipsamhoe Donggye Ollimpi ...

, Bragiel served as a coach for both the Colombia and

Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...

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