I’m Matthew Sullivan, and this is Hooked on Startups, the show where I chat with some of the most talented, inspiring and successful entrepreneurs who talk about their real life stories, overcoming challenges and failures, and mastering success. Get ready for some of the best business tips, tricks and tactics and some frank, unscripted discussions.

I’m originally from London in the UK and have lived in Orange County, California since 2014. I have a strong entrepreneurial background in finance, telecoms and technology. I’m the founder and CEO of QuantmRE, a unique real estate marketplace that helps homeowners unlock their home equity without taking on more debt, and enables investors to build, model, manage and trade portfolios of the equity in single family homes without the complications associated with ownership. I’m also the co-founder of two US based real estate funds and Crowdventure, a real estate crowdfunding platform.

I studied law at Birmingham University in the UK and my first real job was as a London based stockbroker in the late 1980s. I specialised in the Far East markets, and I travelled widely across the whole South East Asian region as part of my job.

Even though I had a great job, I knew I had a burning ambition to be my own boss and run my own company.

Since then, over the past 30 years I’ve been involved in a whole range of businesses and have founded companies in a number of sectors primarily in real estate, telecoms, technology and finance. I’ve travelled the world and have setup and run companies in the UK, India, Australia and now the US.

In the late 90’s I spent a number of years working alongside Richard Branson and his corporate finance team and was involved in a number of high profile Virgin projects, including the Virgin Global Challenger – the first attempt to fly around the world in a hot air balloon. I was involved in the creation of the Virgin Clothing Company, Virgin Cosmetics, Virgin Helicopters, Virgin Executive Jets and a number of other Virgin companies and was appointed a director and Trustee of Virgin’s London Air Ambulance service in London.

Over the years I’ve met some of the most impressive, passionate, dedicated professionals. I’ve also  met some truly amazing people since I moved to the US, and they have become my friends as well as my business partners.

So, I’ve been an entrepreneur for almost three decades. On this podcast we’ll be talking about things we’ve learned over the years, good and bad, and I hope you pick up some advice that’s really useful to you.

We have a lot of tales to tell and I’m really looking forward to it.

See you on the show!