Co-Founder and CEO of Stance Jeff Kearl on Skullcandy, Stance, And Becoming a Founder Whisperer

Jeff Kearl talks lessons from vSpring, Skullcandy, the power of genuine differentiation in the creation of Stance, and the future of investing in Utah’s entrepreneurs.   Jeff Kearl is the co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Stance, a high-growth apparel company whose investors include Dwayne Wade, Jay-Z, and Will Smith. Prior to Stance, Jeff was formerly the executive vice president and served on the board of directors at Logoworks, an internet startup that was successfully acquired by HP in 2007. Following the acquisition, Jeff ran strategy and new ventures at HP. Jeff has worked as an associate at vSpring Capital, a Salt Lake City-based venture capital firm with over $500M under management where he invested in both software and internet companies including Altiris, Ancestry.com, Cerberian, Control4, and MediConnect Global. Jeff serves on the board of directors at Skullcandy (NASDAQ: SKUL), Needle, and Julep.  Jeff is an active angel investor and a managing director at Precedent Investments. He has invested in over 30 startup companies. Most of Jeff’s investments have been in consumer technology companies such as 99 Designs, Ancestry.com (NASDAQ: ACOM), Familylink (acquired by MyHeritage), Science and Uber. He has also invested in several social media infrastructure companies such as Dynamic Signal, Lithium, Needle, Supernova, Visual.ly and ZEFR. Other investments include SAAS companies such as Coupa, Domo, InsideSales.com, Omniture (IPO then acquired by Adobe) and Outright (acquired by GoDaddy). But his favorite investments are brands with authenticity; Celtek (snowboarding), Matuse (surfing), The People’s Movement (environmental awareness) and Skullcandy (music).