Tim Metzner

Founder & Partner

Fireroad

Fireroad is a BuildCo, a new kind of holding company, borrowing the best from venture studio and private equity models. We bring a balanced approach to managing the risk of early-stage ventures with the predictability of enduringly profitable businesses.

Founder & CEO

Differential

Board of Directors

Most notable achievement: incubating and spinning out Cincinnati's first ever tech unicorn; Astronomer.

Part services (building bleeding edge technology), part investor (doing work for equity), part venture studio (before the term existed).

Acme Lock and Door

Advisory Board Member

Coterie

Coterie is transforming commercial insurance by leveraging data and technology to bring speed, simplicity, and service to small business insurance. 

As a co-founder, I served on the Board of Directors, led strategy and go-to-market/growth for the first five years, and played a key role in; raising capital (>$125M), recruiting (to over 150 people), people development, and culture building (many "best places to work" honors).

Co-Founder & Board of Directors

OCEAN Programs

OCEAN was founded by three entrepreneurs who discovered how much of a role community and their faith factored into creating successful companies. Our mission is to increase the awareness of God in the marketplace by building into entrepreneurs. We do this by inspiring, educating, and connecting entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs are faced with a unique set of challenges, obstacles, and stressors and no one to process those with. Creating a company is a long, often lonely, road and frequently leads to burnout, poor decisions and loss of identity.

We believe that entrepreneurs have the potential to create culture, improve lives and flip cities. Beyond helping to build great companies we build great founders who will be good leaders and either good stewards of their success or equipped to handle failure.

Co-founder and Board Member

Chairman Of The Board

SparkPeople.com

Lead the marketing team by establishing the strategy, goals, and execution plans for all marketing and social media initiatives.

Work with the executive team to establish and understand company objectives and priorities and support those through our marketing initiatives.

Key Functions and Accomplishments:

• Leadership: As one of the longest standing employees at SparkPeople, I help to provide overall leadership, direction, motivation, and to maintain the company culture.  
• Digital Marketing: Tested, managed and negotiated most forms of online marketing.
• Customer Acquisition: Focus marketing efforts on driving conversions (SparkPeople has over 13 million lifetime registrations).
• Product Development: Participate in product development initiatives to help drive new revenue, increase user engagement, and improve the overall customer experience.  
• Business Development: Lead deals ranging from corporate wellness partnerships with Fortune 100 companies, to “in kind” marketing swaps with other organizations.
• Strategy: As part of the core management team, I participate in overall strategic planning for the company, and lead all planning related to marketing. 
• SEM: Managed a large PPC budget for over 8 years.
• SEO: Assisted in many strategic initiatives and projects related to search engine optimization.
• Branding: have helped create, manage, and build all of our brands.
• Social Media Marketing: Took the initiative to begin creating a presence for SparkPeople before any competitors had considered it (SparkPeople still has the most active Facebook Page in our space and a large following on Twitter and Pinterest).
• Inbound Marketing: Increase user engagement and repeat visits, beyond the conversion, by improving the user experience and intentionally focusing on inbound marketing efforts (SparkPeople attracts over 10 million unique visitors per month).

Vice President of Marketing

Led key marketing initiatives and participated in business development activities.

Director of Marketing

Work on the business development team creating and maintaining strategic partnerships and business relationships. Also develop and execute marketing plans, social media efforts, and work on branding initiatives for all of our online media properties, which include:

SparkPeople.com: One of the largest and fastest growing weight loss and healthy living websites. 

BabyFit.com: The world's first and only online healthy pregnancy planner and community. 

SparkRecipes.com: Online healthy recipe site and community featuring over 60,000 searchable recipes with ratings and comments. 

SparkTeens.com: Online destination for weight loss and healthy living for teens.

dailySpark.com: A blog created by health and fitness experts that offers fresh doses of fitness, nutrition and health news every day.

Marketing and Business Development

Alpine Investors, LP

During my time with Alpine my primary roles included:
Building and maintaining relationships with business brokers and intermediaries
Analyzing opportunities against Alpine's investment criteria, the leadership teams in place and the industry as a whole
Assisting in due diligence activities for potential deals

Analyst

Worked in various roles during my co-op terms with SparkPeople which evolved and expanded as the company grew. These roles included serving as Project Manager for SparkCincinnati, a large-scale local goodwill initiative aimed at improving the health and fitness of people in Cincinnati.

Project Manager/Co-op

Build, buy, and back companies to create meaningful returns.

Get daily inspiration and thoughts from me at: www.dailymo.co

Powered by faith, an amazing wife, and too much coffee. Love being dad (x4). Entrepreneur (x5). Outdoor adventurer. Startup community builder. 

Helped launch Astronomer, Cincinnati's first unicorn (out of Cincinnati's first Venture Studio, Differential), co-founded the longest running startup accelerator in our region, OCEAN, and one of the region's best-funded and fastest growing startups, Coterie Insurance.

Currently writing pre-seed checks out of Fireroad Ventures Fund I and actively hunting for great small businesses to partner with in the home services space.  

I've been in and around startups my entire career as a founder, investor, mentor, teacher, and coach. I've been blessed to get to do work that I love with amazing humans who make me better. 

I believe that entrepreneurs can change the world by creating great jobs and culture. This belief has been a driving force behind my own entrepreneurial endeavors as well as the non-profit that I started, OCEAN Programs.

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