Chris Folayan

Chris Folayan is an entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and author with a career spanning more than two decades in building and scaling multi-million-dollar technology companies worldwide. Folayan began his entrepreneurial journey at age 7 with a recycling business and has since founded and exited several companies across diverse industries.

After earning a marketing degree from San Jose State University, Folayan developed a passion for software development, teaching himself multiple programming languages. At 19, he joined Quantum, a hard drive manufacturing company, where he worked in software engineering and participated in mergers and acquisitions due diligence.

Following his tenure at Quantum, Folayan co-founded NTM, a digital music platform recognized as the first indie music recording-to-digital rights and sales platform. After exiting NTM, he transformed OCFX Inc. into a Silicon Valley brand, collaborating with companies such as SONY, Quantum, LSI Logic, Accenture, Adobe, Cisco, EMC, Merrill Lynch, and CapitalOne, focusing on software product development and digital transformation.

Folayan later launched MallforAfrica, which became Africa's largest e-commerce platform, enabling consumers to purchase products from over 250 US and UK retailers. Responding to global demand, MallforAfrica evolved into Link Commerce, a SaaS platform that expanded to 75 countries, licensing its technology to fintech, shipping, and global partners and facilitating the sale of billions of products to millions of customers.

After his fourth business exit, Folayan authored "From Pitch To Close: What Founders and CEOs Need to Know and Do Before An Investor Meeting," a book designed to guide entrepreneurs in building high-valuation companies. He has also written "A Guide to Raising a CEO and Entrepreneur" and the e-book series "Investor Pitch Practice Questions." Folayan created the card game "Ready Set CEO," used by companies, incubators, accelerators, and educational institutions to help CEOs develop leadership skills.

Folayan is a public speaker and mentor, having spoken in more than 25 countries at events including the United Nations, World Trade Organization, London Stock Exchange, and Global Business Forum. He has mentored students and startup founders at universities such as Stanford, UC Berkeley, Harvard, and UCLA. Folayan shares his "P.I.N.K." philosophy—Passion, Innovation, Network, Knowledge—to support entrepreneurs in business development and global expansion.

His work has been featured in books including "The Next Africa" and "The New Leadership Literacies," and he has appeared in The New York Times, Bloomberg, CNBC, USA Today, and TechCrunch. Folayan is the founder of FounderCentered.com, a platform connecting founders, entrepreneurs, and CEOs with resources to support global business growth.