Rodney Sampson is an innovator, serial entrepreneur, angel investor, published author, and consecrated bishop. As an innovator and serial entrepreneur, Sampson co-founded Multicast Media Networks (Streamingfaith.com) in 2000 (acquired in 2010), a live and on-demand streaming platform that laid the foundation for companies like YouTube and Ustream. Not stopping there, Sampson co-founded Intellectual Currency (an integrated marketing, intellectual property, diversity & inclusion and business development advisory firm) in 2002, Intellect Inspire (a digital publishing imprint of Audible) in 2006, and Legacy Opportunity Fund in 2007 with investments in technology, consumer products, energy, cyber-security, publishing and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. He also serves on the advisory boards of Digit, a disruptive financial technology company, Mark Burnett Productions, Springboard Fund and multiple startup and early stage companies throughout the world.
Sampson is passionate about reducing our nation’s poverty and wealth gap by advancing the cause of S.T.E.M, innovation, entrepreneurship and capital formation as a way of life for all communities. To advance this definitive cause, Sampson created Opportunity Ecosystem (OE). Opportunity Ecosystem includes Opportunity Hub, a multi-campus coworking space, coding college, entrepreneurship school, pre-accelerator and incubator. Opportunity Hub is also home to Opportunity Ventures, a new seed and early stage investment fund. In January 2013, Sampson launched Kingonomics, the nation’s leading platform for minorities and under-served communities to learn, navigate and master the investment ecosystem. Kingonomics conferences, events and trainings attract over 1,500 entrepreneurs, 500 teenagers and 100 accredited investors and mentors annually.
As a member of the Board of Directors of the Crowdfunding Professional Association (CfPA), Sampson is an active advocate and respected authority on Federal equity crowdfunding via the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS) Act and intrastate equity crowdfunding via Georgia’s “Invest Georgia Exemption”. Always meditating, thinking, networking and connecting to disrupt economic culture, Sampson is innovating what he has branded as an “ecosystem based capital formation platform” – designed to interconnect the capital markets of minority owned financial institutions, business associations, churches, neighborhood & community organizations, historical black colleges and universities (HBCU’s) and the constituents they mutually and respectively serve. The platform will allow underserved and under-represented communities to learn, engage and invest in the private capital markets by providing access to relevant investment opportunities traditionally reserved for accredited and institutional investors. The long-term outcome will result in sustainable new job creation, wealth creation and a better society for all.
Throughout this journey, Sampson has maintained the creativity of his youth and early entrepreneurial career as an experienced advisor, integrated marketer, business developer and connector. Having worked very closely on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of The Christ, Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe & The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, Sampson was tapped in 2013 by Mark Burnett to create the diversity and inclusion initiatives at One Three Media, a joint venture between Mark Burnett Productions and Hearst. Mark Burnett is the Executive Producer of The Voice, Survivor, Celebrity Apprentice, ABC’s Shark Tank, The Bible Series, Son of God Movie & A.D. In Seasons 5 & 6 of the hit ABC show Sharktank, more than 15 minority-owned startups were afforded the opportunity to pitch their companies for angel investment on the show. Even in his advisory practice, Sampson is still working tirelessly to close the wealth gap while simultaneously shifting culture’s perceptions of minority entrepreneurs and investors.
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