Mark Goldston

Mark R. Goldston is a longtime consumer and internet executive turned investor. From 1985–2013 he served as CEO of major public and startup companies, taking two companies public as CEO and leading four separate public companies over that span. Early in his career he held roles at Revlon, Faberge/Elizabeth Arden, Reebok and LA Gear, and was a Principal on the turnaround team at private equity firm Odyssey Partners. He became President of Faberge at age 31 — reportedly the youngest president of a Fortune 500 consumer-products company at the time — and later authored the business book *The Turnaround Prescription*.

Goldston is best known for building NetZero and United Online. He was one of NetZero's earliest employees and its first Chairman and CEO, taking the free-ISP startup public in September 1999; the stock jumped ~82% on its first trading day to a roughly $3 billion valuation, making it one of the internet's earliest "unicorns." In 2001 he engineered the merger of NetZero and rival Juno to form United Online (Nasdaq: UNTD), where he served as Chairman, President and CEO from 2001–2013. The company grew into an internet conglomerate spanning NetZero, Juno, FTD, Interflora UK, Classmates, MyPoints and StayFriends, with revenue rising roughly 450-fold from about $2 million to just under $1 billion during his tenure.

Since November 2013 he has been Founder, Chairman and CEO of The Goldston Group, a Los Angeles venture capital and strategic advisory firm. He is also Co-Founder, General Partner and Executive Chairman of Athletic Propulsion Labs (APL), the luxury performance athletic-footwear company he launched in 2009 with his twin sons Adam and Ryan Goldston — a company whose "Load 'N Launch" basketball-shoe technology was famously "Banned by the NBA" in 2010. Goldston holds more than 100 U.S. and foreign patents across lighted footwear, energy-return systems and digital technologies. In June 2023 he was named Executive Chairman of The Beachbody Company / BODi (Nasdaq: BODI) to drive its turnaround. He earned a B.S.B.A. in marketing and finance from Ohio State University and an MBA from Northwestern University's J.L. Kellogg School of Management.

• Invests through The Goldston Group under a model he calls "Venturepreneurship" — making a direct investment *and* providing hands-on guidance, mentoring and strategic advice, rather than passive capital.
• Backs companies "shaking up the status quo": in his words, *"I am always interested in new ways of doing things and working with companies that are shaking up the status quo."*
• Sector-agnostic but drawn to internet/tech, consumer products, e-commerce, medical devices, retail/restaurant, and footwear/apparel — reflecting his own operating background.
• Prefers roles where he can add operating leverage: he typically joins as a board member, strategic adviser and/or chairman alongside his check.
• Values founder ambition and disruptive product/technology (e.g., patented footwear tech, Web3/music-tech at TuneGo) over incremental ideas.