Primary Job Title Director Primary Organization 
Central Texas Angel Network
Location Orlando, Florida, United States Regions East Coast, Southern US Gender Male
LinkedIn View on LinkedIn
John is involved in a number of professional activities but his primary focus is finding new companies and technologies and helping them bring their products to market. John does this as co-founder of an Austin-based company called Discovery Alliance, LLC which is majority owned by Capital Southwest (CSWC: Nasdaq). Capital Southwest is a $600m,
publicly traded, investment company based in Dallas, TX.
Before becoming an angel investor, John had a varied career with many different types of jobs. After graduating from Vanderbilt University as a chemical engineer, he worked at a chemical plant for DuPont. John left the technical world to go to law school at West Virginia University and then returned to DuPont as a corporate lawyer. He did a broad array of corporate legal work, including mergers and acquisitions, securities law, contracts, employment law, environmental law, regulatory issues, international legal work and patent law. After a three year assignment in Geneva, Switzerland doing M&A and international legal work for DuPont, he moved to Austin with his family to become Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the newly formed DuPont Photomasks. (DuPont Photomasks was DuPont's first ever IPO and it was ultimately acquired by Toppan Inc for $650m).
John left DuPont Photomasks to do a consumer start-up based on a couple of his patents. The product, Squid Soap, ended up on over 10,000 retail stores in the US and was eventually sold to Airborne Health.
John holds about a dozen US patents and also has multiple patents pending. In addition to Squid Soap, three of John's other inventions have been the basis for separate start up companies which have received angel funding and are currently in operation.
