Serial Entrepreneur
STARTUP ARTIST
Daring mighty things, Brinkley Warren is known for activating bodacious ideas. He is an artist, an author, and a serial-entrepreneur with over 15 years of C-level experience in high-tech and global impact. Most recently he founded Token Fest — a leading blockchain and cryptocurrency conference and events company. He is passionate about applying exponentially advancing technologies to address global grand challenges.
Brinkley has founded or co-founded 10+ ventures during the last decade on 5 continents, including RallyHealth.com, LeanMonitor.com, and MegaBots.com among others, and with multiple exits. Brinkley’s work is industry-agnostic but united by a theme of disruptive democratization, and he has launched and operated ventures in genetics, health, artificial intelligence, robotics, innovation management, music, SaaS, mobile gaming, web design, sports entertainment, space ventures, and a 501(c)3 arts non-profit.
Brinkley is a frequent speaker and advisor to global change-makers. He serves as an entrepreneurial delegate for the US Department of State and Fulbright program, and is dedicated to activating social entrepreneurship ecosystems that address the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals. Brinkley’s message is one of doing well by doing good.
Brinkley’s transdisciplinary art practice has been recognized internationally, including a Fulbright Fellowship.
His first business was a music startup in college where he produced innovative digital music products for over 300 performing artists, including 2 Grammy-award winners. He began his early career as a journalist (CNN) and documentary filmmaker (Cabin Creek Films, Discovery).
Brinkley has won several awards including a ComputerWorld Honors Gold Laureate and Richard Branson’s Extreme Tech Challenge, and he has been featured by CNN, CNBC, Forbes, Newsweek, Fast Company, NBC, Popular Science, Playboy, The Guardian, Top Gear, Discovery News, NPR, and the Wall Street Journal among others. He has two masters degrees and is a graduate of Singularity University where he also serves a Faculty member and advisor to startup entrepreneurs.
Brinkley is passionate about harnessing the economics and storytelling capabilities of the space industry in order to drive positive social and environmental impact on Earth, with a special emphasis on connecting the new space industry with the SDGs. To this end, he’ll soon be launching a new venture that empowers the commercial space ecosystem through blockchain technologies.
He is author of the book, “Outer Space Inside: Promoting Peace, Prosperity, and Planet,” which outlines a bold and positive vision for the future of humanity and our relationship to the cosmos, to ourselves, and to each other.
In his own words Brinkley says, “I am an ecosystems and storytelling person, intent on creating the future. My purpose is to create a brighter future, through intention and creative collaboration. I believe in an abundant and sustainable future, and I’m committed to working hard for the good cause. My hope is to be a conscientious participator, through strategic vision, tactical know-how, and creative acumen, I am seeking to shepherd current and future generations towards greener pastures. My joy is building and working with transformative teams to produce transformative experiences through the application of exponentially advancing technologies. My purpose is to make big ideas come to life that bring us together and make us better in the service of humanity. In terms of my entrepreneurial thesis — I think all of my work and career has been guided by mindful inquiry into the great mysteries of the cosmos with a penchant for hacking global culture. I am addicted to learning and personal growth through empathetic and transpersonal approaches.”
America’s first giant robot — the 1st MegaBot — premiered at Maker Faire in Summer 2015
As one of three co-founders at MegaBots Inc., Brinkley helped to conceptualize and launch the company — including a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2015 ($550k) and raising $4M in venture capital in 2016. His main areas of contribution have included: Marketing, Transmedia Design, Media Development, Business Strategy, Business Development, Sponsorship Sales, Fundraising, Media Licensing, Content Licensing, Strategic Partnerships, and serving as Brand Evangelist.
In 2017 MegaBots will be on television and distributing a “MegaBot” kit that enables artists, fabricators, and fans from around the world to build their own MegaBot without needing to know about robotics. These “crowd created” MegaBots will compete for glory in the most epic fantasy sports league ever created. MegaBots is positioned to become a leading multi-platform transmedia franchise that features business centers in many verticals such as retail, toys, film, television, video games, live events, and advertising sponsorships among others.
MegaBots and the MegaBots League will lead to many advances in robotics technology, and Brinkley intends to apply these technologies towards commercial space development and asteroid mining.
(L-R) Autodesk CEO Carl Bass with MegaBots Co-Founders — Gui Cavalcanti, Matt Oehrlein, and Brinkley Warren
Prior to MegaBots Brinkley co-founded LeanMonitor.com and successfully exited the company (2012-2015). LeanMonitor provides the World’s most comprehensive suite of Lean Startup tools to assist entrepreneurs, innovators, and changemakers to successfully guide and grow their projects by aligning customer demand with the innovator’s vision. He also serves as a Lean Startup advisor at Singularity University at NASA Ames as well as serving as advising numerous startups globally.
Brinkley served as the co-founding VP of Strategy and Innovation at IActive, an award-winning artificial intelligence firm specializing in automated planning and scheduling systems using hierarchical task networking. At IActive Brinkley helped to commercialize and bring to market technology that was based on 20 years of advanced AI research and was a spin-out of the University of Grenada AI Lab. Prior to being acquired, the company was recognized with multiple industry awards for a clinical decision-support system for oncology treatments that reduced medical-errors by 7%, and was also recognized as a Cool Vendor Award by Gartner.
Brinkley is a dedicated practitioner of mindfulness, life-long learning and self-transformation and is an active songwriter and musician (lyracist, guitar and drums).
Brinkley’s first business was a music recording business that he launched while at the University of Georgia, where he had the opportunity to record for over 300 bands, including Bonnie Raitt, My Morning Jacket, Drive By Truckers, and Bob Weir. He also began the World’s first rockumentary podcasting series in 2005 which attracted an audience of over 100,000 people from 27 countries.
Brinkley began his career as the youngest person ever to produce broadcast news at CNN in Atlanta beginning at age 16, and his early career included stints with the Discovery Channel, Clear Channel Communications, and Cabin Creek Films. By the time he was 25 he had worked with the world’s leading news network, the world’s largest cable company, the world’s largest radio company and a 2-time Academy Award winning filmmaker.
Brinkley describes blurring the line between artist, social activist and entrepreneur as follows:
“Creative actions aligned with compassion and scaled through strategic will and tactical ingenuity is what creates our collective future. Know thyself, and give thyself. As an artist and creative researcher, I started exploring transpersonal psychology, ancient philosophy, theology, comparative mythology, storytelling, and the role of historical art movements throughout human history. As a social-scientist I explored empowered agencies, the technologies of self-transformation, entrepreneurial anthropology, game design, action-oriented-education, journalism, and the role of the entrepreneur as artist, and the artist as entrepreneur. I would say that all of these inputs have strengthened my abilities as a memetic-engineer and meta-conceptualist. My artist practice is centered on transpersonal experience design and the art of entrepreneurship. I was awarded a Fulbright for my creative work and was honored to serve as a creative diplomat to New Zealand and Mexico. If you’re purely in the art world, it’s Actionaut you seek. I believe that entrepreneurship is the highest art form of our age, and that the only real art is a demonstration of entrepreneurial agency. I believe that all entrepreneurship is about positive social impact, and I agree with the Ashoka creed that all of us are changemakers. I am proud to work with and support the Fulbright Institute of International Education to promote a global movement towards social entrepreneurship.“
Welcome to Brinkley’s personal blog. Broadly speaking, if you’re interested in creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship and/or building future realities – welcome! Please connect! Please connect on Twitter and Linkedin.
“Bright stars ahead. Onwards!” ~Brinkley
