Hi. My name is Zach Ware. I’m an entrepreneur and investor living between Central Texas and Northwest Montana.
You can email me at zw at zgware dot com or DM me on Twitter. Some of my favorite readings are here.
Work:
- Founder and owner of Freehouse Capital, a permanent equity company that focuses on boring, old economy stuff in Texas and the Upper Rockies.
- Occasional angel investor.
- Consulting venture partner at Trust Ventures, focused on startups tackling systemic problems in highly regulated industries.
Other stuff
- Outdoorsman, aspiring river guide, skier, occasional rock climber, freediver, uncle.
- Learn and write about functional health, evolutionary biology and psychology, stemming from a 2015 shift to focusing on my health in a way that would change everything about how I live and think.
- General psycho training with Central Athlete along with training for my first gravel cycling race in late-2021. Follow my psycho workouts on Strava.
Some things I’ve done:
- Managing Partner of VTF Capital with over 70 seed stage investments in companies including Ring, SpaceX, Asana, Mizzen + Main and 50+ more.
- CEO of NYC-based Pilotworks which provided shared commercial kitchens and services to food companies. I joined as CEO in 2018 to lead a turnaround, ultimately shuttering the company.
- Co-founder of Downtown Project in Las Vegas, a 41-acre urban redevelopment project with former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh including commercial redevelopment, multi-family residential, small business investment and operating hospitality outlets. Led real estate development, government partnerships and major projects. (NY Times, Fortune, Wired)
- Developed the the 4.5 acre, four building Zappos.com LEED Gold HQ in Downtown Las Vegas. (BI).
- Head of Product at Zappos.com including product management, content and business operations for our family of sites and apps.
- Founded Shift, a Las Vegas transportation startup that nearly killed me. I shut it down in 2015. (Washington Post)
- Co-founded multi-unit coworking company Work In Progress (acquired by Let’s Rally).
- Led retail and ecommerce at The Republic of Tea.
- Led sales and distribution in the Southeast US for a DC-based gourmet food importer and distributor.
- Studied economics and computer science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN and attended high school at Woodberry Forest School in Virginia.
- Held lots of random jobs including working at Starbucks, managing a convenience store, being an electrician’s assistant, picking tobacco on my family’s farm and working in a Walmart meat department for two days.
Old Media:
Speaking and media bio is here.
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