Chris Folayan is a renowned and award-winning serial entrepreneur, author and founder, celebrated for his exceptional ability to start and scale multi-million-dollar global companies. With an illustrious career spanning decades, Chris has demonstrated an extraordinary talent for investing, raising substantial capital, and building thriving businesses from the ground up. His entrepreneurial journey began at the tender age of seven and a half when he started a profitable recycling business, and since then, he has become an expert across various fields, founding and exiting several successful companies globally.
Born and raised in Africa, Chris' relentless pursuit of knowledge led him to California, where he attended San Jose State University in the heart of Silicon Valley. Graduating with a degree in marketing, he discovered his passion for software development and embarked on a self-taught journey in mastering several programming and development languages. This impressive feat caught the attention of several Silicon Valley tech giants, including Quantum. At the young age of 19, Chris was recruited by Quantum, an innovative hard drive manufacturing company.
During his time at Quantum, Chris immersed himself in cutting-edge software engineering which led him to work with due diligence for mergers and acquisition division. White at Quantum he worked on the development of numerous technical patents. Remarkably, he accomplished all of this while simultaneously pursuing a full-time college education. Chris' expertise garnered widespread recognition, and companies across Silicon Valley eagerly sought his technical and market-oriented insights. Eventually, he left Quantum and co-founded NTM, a pioneering digital music label platform, revolutionizing the industry with the world's first indie music recording-to-digital rights and sales platform. Collaborating with artists from around the globe, Chris ensured that their music was safe while being encrypted and sold online. He dedicated his time to developing the patent for the encryption technology currently being used by NTM and artists around the world.
Having successfully exited NTM, Chris founded his first of many companies, OCFX Inc. As the founder and CEO, he built OCFX into a renowned Silicon Valley brand, collaborating with prestigious Fortune 100 and 500 companies such as SONY, Quantum, LSI Logic, Accenture, Adobe, Cisco, EMC, Merrill Lynch, Elo, CapitalOne, History Channel and many others. Under Chris' leadership, OCFX built a reputation for turning clients' imaginative ideas into exceptional revenue-generating software products. Additionally, Chris spearheaded the development of several spin-off companies within the OCFX ecosystem, offering valuable tools and solutions that companies could purchase and license. Chris sold and exited several of OCFX spin-off companies to major brands.
While OCFX was growing globally with over 350 employees, he developed one of Africa’s largest eCommerce platforms MallforAfrica and MallfortheWorld. He nurtured this idea to help people in Africa and the world who were unbanked shoppers on top USA and UK retailers. Starting the company from scratch wasn’t easy but Chris ended up building a multimillion dollar monthly revenue business and quickly became one of Africa’s and the world's leading eCommerce experts in emerging markets.
Completing his 4th exit after selling MallforAfrica and Mallfortheworld to a UK based business, Chris wrote a book titled “From Pitch To Close: What Founders and CEOs Need to Know and Do Before An Investor Meeting” which won him several prestigious book awards. The book was written to help entrepreneurs build companies at the highest valuation possible. Chris has also written other books about entrepreneurship and investments.
Today Chris is the founder of the platform FounderCentered.com, and he consults companies on how to expand globally. Chris also mentors, deliver lectures and serving on several Corporate boards. He also invests and is an exciting public speaker with amazing motivational stories and lessons to share. Chris has spoken in over 50 countries and has a reputation for thinking outside the box and getting everyone to master the entrepreneurial mindset with his own concept, well known by the acronym P.I.N.K (Passion - Innovation - Networking - Knowledge). Reading his books, hopping on a call or listening to Chris speak is a treat. His witty, comic yet inspirational insights into building a business with passion while thinking outside the box is a masterpiece. Over 25+ years of ownership, Chris now runs FounderCentered.com and still owns and operates OCFX as a legacy brand.
No business succeeds without customers, and paying attention to them is key to keeping your business innovative and around for years to come.