Rodney Sampson

Rodney Sampson is recognized as one of the world’s foremost builders of inclusive innovation, entrepreneurship and investment ecosystems. His mission is to ensure that everyone—particularly socially disadvantaged communities—has equitable access to the wealth-creation opportunities emerging in the future of work and the fourth industrial revolution. He views these opportunities as essential pathways to reducing poverty and closing the racial wealth gap globally.

Sampson is the co-founder and vice chairman of Piksel Technology and serves as executive chairman and chief executive officer of Opportunity Hub (OHUB).

Over the course of his 20-year entrepreneurial career, Sampson has co-founded multiple startups that collectively raised more than $20 million in angel and venture capital, created hundreds of jobs, and generated tens of millions in revenue prior to acquisition or public offerings. In the early 2000s, he co-founded and sold Multicast Media Technologies (Streamingfaith.com) and EFactor (EFCT), making him one of only three Black co-founders during that era whose high-growth technology startups raised over $1 million in venture funding and were acquired for eight-figure sums. He also founded Intellectual Currency, an integrated go-to-market, publishing and advisory firm that served Hollywood studios, cable networks, global corporations, the U.S. government, African heads of state and leading Black church denominations.

In 2013, building on the success of his bestselling book "Kingonomics" and its large-scale conferences, Sampson co-founded OHUB. It quickly scaled into the leading multi-campus coworking space, entrepreneurship center and tech hub in the U.S., producing more than 300 events annually, a startup pre-accelerator, a coding bootcamp, a scholarship initiative, and an angel investment platform for underestimated founders. At its peak, OHUB welcomed over 15,000 visitors each year.

From 2015 to 2017, Sampson was a partner at TechSquare Labs, a tech hub and seed-stage venture fund that launched the $100,000 Atlanta Startup Battle. Today, its portfolio companies have raised nearly $300 million in follow-on capital, are valued at more than $1.5 billion, generate over $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and employ more than 1,000 people. Sampson remains the fund’s largest minority limited partner.

Currently, as executive chairman and CEO of OHUB and OHUB Foundation, Sampson is scaling OHUB into a global platform for future of work, opportunity and wealth creation. The organization focuses on early exposure to technology, entrepreneurship and venture; demand-driven technology education and talent placement; inclusive ecosystem building; and capital formation. OHUB’s network includes thousands of college students and young professionals across hundreds of campuses and partnerships with more than 50 tech companies, corporations, startups, venture funds, municipalities, foundations and universities.

National initiatives include OHUB-Cities, OHUB-Campus, HBCU-SXSW, the 100 Black Angels Fund I, and DEIS, a platform designed to operationalize diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability across growing enterprises. Sampson is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and a professor of entrepreneurship at Morehouse College. Earlier in his career, he was the first head of diversity at Mark Burnett Productions, executive producers of ABC’s “Shark Tank.”

A dedicated philanthropist and advocate, Sampson serves on the boards of AI4All, the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, the International Bishops Conference and the Georgia Technology for All Policy Summit. He studied at Tulane University, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, and Keller Graduate School of Management.