Matthew Pierce | |
|---|---|
 Pierce for O Labs | |
| Born | December 3, 1977 |
| Alma mater | Stanford University (B.A.) UCLA Anderson (M.B.A.) |
| Occupation(s) | Co-founder & CEO, O Labs [1] |
| Spouse | Magdalena Sandoval |
Matthew Pierce (born December 3, 1977) is an entrepreneur, university lecturer, and game designer. He is a former NCAA Champion and was a member of the United States Men's National Swim Team.
Matthew Pierce attended Stanford University, where he was a member of the men's swimming and diving team. The team won the NCAA Championship in 1998. [2] Pierce was an All-American, an NCAA Champion in the 200-yard butterfly [3] and a gold medalist at the World University Games for USA Swimming.
After graduating from Stanford, Pierce co-founded Rosum Corporation which was later acquired by TruePosition. [4] He then moved to Los Angeles, received his MBA at UCLA Anderson and became VP of Strategy at Originate.
Matthew now serves as co-founder and CEO of O Labs, [5] [6] a joint venture between Originate, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, and ICM Partners. O Labs incubates and operates early-stage portfolio companies that attempt to address the needs of large enterprises. [7] [8] Pierce is a regular contributor to Southern California's Silicon Beach and the Los Angeles startup community. [9]
Pierce is a lecturer at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a visiting scholar in UCLA’s Economics Department, where he teaches entrepreneurship.
Pierce is also a game designer, serving as founder and chief creative officer of Robot Dinosaur Games. He created the game Scenarium [10] [11] and co-founded Versus, a real-money video game tournament platform backed by O Labs.
Matthew Nicholas Biondi is an American former competitive swimmer and water polo player. As a swimmer, he is an eleven-time Olympic medalist, and former world record-holder in five events. Biondi competed in the Summer Olympic Games in 1984, 1988 and 1992, winning a total of eleven medals. During his career, he set three individual world records in the 50-meter freestyle and four in the 100-meter freestyle.
The NCAA Men's Water Polo Championship is an annual tournament to determine the national champion of NCAA men's collegiate water polo. Beginning in 1969, it has been held every year except 2020, when it was postponed to March 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. With a limited number of NCAA water polo programs at the national level, all men's teams, whether from Division I, Division II, or Division III, are eligible to compete each year in the National Collegiate tournament. The tournament was expanded from a four-team bracket in 2013 by adding two play-in games that are contested by the bottom four seeds, effectively creating a six-team bracket with a first-round bye for the top two teams. Starting with the 2023 tournament, the number of teams was increased to eight teams. This makes it the sport with the fewest teams reaching the NCAA tournament; this is because there are only 43 men's water polo teams between all three NCAA divisions.
Stephen Todd Alford is an American men's college basketball coach and former professional player who is the head coach for the Nevada Wolf Pack of the Mountain West Conference (MWC). Born and raised in Indiana, he was a two-time consensus first-team All-American playing in college for the Indiana Hoosiers. He led them to a national championship in 1987. After playing professionally for four years in the National Basketball Association (NBA), he has been a college head coach for over 30 years.
The UCLA Bruins are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Los Angeles. The Bruin men's and women's teams participate in NCAA Division I as part of the Big Ten Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF). For football, they are in the Football Bowl Subdivision of Division I. UCLA is second to only Stanford University as the school with the most NCAA team championships at 124 NCAA team championships. UCLA offers 11 varsity sports programs for men and 14 for women.
Thomas Michael Jager is an American former competition swimmer. He is five-time Olympic gold medalist in relay events, a two-time World Championship individual gold medalist for the 50-meter freestyle, and a former world record-holder in two events. Jager set the 50-meter freestyle world record on six occasions during his career. He held this record for over ten years from August 1989 to June 2000.
The USC Trojans are the intercollegiate athletic teams that represent the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. While the men's teams are nicknamed the Trojans, the women's athletic teams are referred to as either the Trojans or Women of Troy. The program participates in the Big Ten Conference and has won 136 team national championships, 112 of which are National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) national championships. USC's official colors are cardinal and gold. The Trojans have a cross-town rivalry in several sports with UCLA. However, USC's football rivalry with Notre Dame predates the UCLA rivalry by three years. The Notre Dame rivalry stems mainly from the annual football game played between these two universities and is considered the greatest intersectional rivalry in college football. The Trojans also enjoy a rivalry with the Stanford Cardinal. The USC Trojans are considered one of the most successful college athletic programs of all time.
Thomas Edwin Bruce was an American competitive swimmer, Olympic champion, and former world record-holder.
The UCLA Bruins men's basketball program represents the University of California, Los Angeles in the sport of men's basketball as a member of the Big Ten Conference. Established in 1919, the program has won a record 11 NCAA titles. Coach John Wooden led the Bruins to 10 national titles in 12 seasons, from 1964 to 1975, including seven straight from 1967 to 1973. UCLA went undefeated a record four times. Coach Jim Harrick led the team to another NCAA title in 1995. Former coach Ben Howland led UCLA to three consecutive Final Four appearances from 2006 to 2008. As a member of the AAWU, Pacific-8 and then Pacific-10, UCLA set an NCAA Division I record with 13 consecutive regular season conference titles between 1967 and 1979 which stood until tied by Kansas in 2017. In 2024, UCLA departed the Pac-12 Conference and joined the Big Ten Conference on August 2, 2024.
Rafael Escalas Bestard is a former competitive swimmer from Spain. Escalas competed on the 1980 and 1984 Spanish Olympic teams, and swam competitively in the United States for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
George Frederick Haines was a competitive swimmer and coach who for twenty-three years coached the highly successful Santa Clara Swim Club which he founded in 1951. He later coached UCLA, Stanford University, and six U.S. Olympic swim teams. In 1977, he was inducted as an Honor Coach into the International Swimming Hall of Fame who later voted him "Coach of the Century" in 2001.
Brian Stuart Goodell is an American politician, former competitive swimmer, two-time Olympic champion, and former world record-holder in two events. He is a city councilman and former mayor of Mission Viejo, California.
John Clifford Moffet is an American former swimmer who competed at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California, having also been selected for the 1980 Summer Olympics that were ultimately boycotted by the United States. At the 1984 Olympics, he finished fifth in the final of the men's 100-meter breaststroke event. In 1985 he won three gold medals at both the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships and the Summer Universiade. In 1986, he concluded his collegiate career, after winning five NCAA Division 1 Championships, and moved into the entertainment industry. As a television producer he is a three-time Primetime Emmy Award winner for The Amazing Race.
Dan Guerrero is an American former athletic director for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He also has served as the chairman of the Selection Committee for the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament. Guerrero was roundly criticized for many of his hiring decisions, particularly in football and men's basketball.
Annette Elizabeth Salmeen is an American biochemist, a 1997 Rhodes Scholar and a gold medalist at the 1996 Summer Olympics.
Robin Leamy is an American former competition swimmer of Samoan and New Zealand descent who participated in the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, California. He earned a gold medal by swimming for the winning U.S. team in the preliminary heats of the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. Leamy also represented the U.S. in the Pan American and World Games, where he was a member of several U.S. World Record setting relay teams. Leamy also held the world record in the 50 meter freestyle from 1981 through 1985.
Richard Craig Oppel is an American former competition swimmer who represented the United States at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. Oppel earned a gold medal by swimming for the winning U.S. team in the preliminary heats of the men's 4×200-meter freestyle relay.
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Ron "Stix" Ballatore was an American college and international swimming coach. From 1978 to 1994, Ballatore was the head coach of the men's swimming and diving team at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he coached his UCLA Bruins swimmers to an NCAA national championship in 1982.
Abrahm David DeVine is an American former competitive swimmer from Seattle. He currently represents the LA Current which is part of the International Swimming League. His first international competition was in the men's 200 metre Individual Medley (IM) event at the 2017 World Aquatics Championships held in Budapest, Hungary. In 2017, as a member of the U.S. FINA World Championships team he finished tenth in the 200 IM. In his junior season at Stanford he became a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) champion in the 400 IM, he was named the Pac-12 Conference Swimmer of the Year. In 2018, DeVine placed second in the 200 IM at U.S. Summer Nationals, which qualified him for the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships In Tokyo, Japan, where he finished fifth.