George has a passion for entrepreneurship and formalized his consulting efforts as the Founder and Managing Partner of Red Rocket in 2010. George has consulted over 750 startups since launching Red Rocket. George has a very deep base of relationships in the startup, digital and venture community, in Chicago and nationwide. George desires to help other B2C and B2B entrepreneurs navigate through their growth, fund raising or other business issues. George’s skills are particularly deep in business planning, growth strategy, corporate development, fund raising, sales and marketing.  As author of 101 Startup Lessons-An Entrepreneur's Handbook, George is also an featured speaker/mentor for many entrepreneurial organizations and guest lecturer at respected business schools.  George was named to the Crains Tech 50 and Tribune Tech 100 in Chicago, was a finalist for the "Mentor of Year" by Built In Chicago and is a contributing blogger on entrepreneurship for Forbes, Entrepreneur, Wall Street Journal, The Next Web, Alley Watch and others.

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In addition to his role at Red Rocket, beginning in February 2018, with Red Rocket's acquisition of the business, George is also the Co-CEO of Restaurant Furniture Plus, a high-growth B2B ecommerce and services company selling furniture to restaurant chains or their design agencies.

 

From 2009-2010, George was the CEO of MediaRecall, a B2B digital video services and technology business.   George lead the sale of the business to Deluxe in February 2010 at up to a 10x return on invested capital. George helped to build a $25MM sales pipeline from big brand entertainment clients and cut a strategic content monetization and strategic distribution relationship with Getty Images.  George provided growth capital for MediaRecall prior to the sale to Deluxe.

 

Between 1999-2008, George was the Founder and CEO of iExplore.com, the #1 adventure travel website with over 1MM visitors per month (sold to TUI Travel PLC, the largest seller of leisure travel in the world). Here is where George sharpened his skills in digital marketing and monetization for ten years, including launching an ad sales business from scratch. iExplore was a venture-backed business, including a strategic relationship with National Geographic.  George was the seed capital for iExplore.  George was named an Ernst & Young "Entrepreneur of the Year" in 2001, for his efforts at iExplore.

 

Between 1991-1999, George was an Investment Banker with Credit Suisse First Boston, doing mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance in the retailing/consumer industry group. Key clients included Home Depot, Pep Boys CVS, CompUSA, Linens N Things and Babies R Us. George was a top ranked banker amongst his peers and completed over 50 corporate finance and M&A advisory assignments.

 

George received his BBA in finance from the University of Michigan in 1991.  He is also a founding mentor of the Chicago chapters of TechStars and Founder Institute.

 

Follow George:

 

   Twitter:       http://www.twitter.com/georgedeeb

   LinkedIn:    http://www.linkedin.com/in/georgedeeb

   AngelList:   http://www.angel.co/georgedeeb