Tripp Rackley

Founder and Former Chief Executive Officer

Recognized as one of the top three innovators in financial services today by Bank Technology News, Tripp Rackley is the founder and former CEO of Firethorn (www.firethornmobile.com), a Qualcomm company. Firethorn is the mobile banking and payments enabler delivering the market’s first mobile consumer wallet solution supported by the nation’s leading financial institutions and wireless carriers.

Since its official launch in November 2006, Firethorn has signed strategic partnerships with AT&T and Verizon Wireless, the nation’s second largest wireless carrier; brought the nation’s first financial institution live with mobile banking and payments in BancorpSouth; and secured agreements with multiple top 10 financial institutions.

A financial services technology veteran and online banking pioneer, Rackley determined from the outset that for mobile banking and payments to succeed and reach mass-market adoption, financial institutions and wireless carriers would have to work together. For this reason, he assembled an all-star board of advisors and management team, representing veteran leadership, market-making insight and track record of success in financial services and wireless communications, whose collective experience have:

• Implemented over 2,000 financial institutions and trained over 20,000 bankers;
• Structured Firethorn to operate as a federation that assembles, connects and manages the complex web of partners, network standards and platform interfaces that make mobile banking and payments possible;
• Engineered a secure and scalable technology platform that delivers comprehensive mobile banking and payments capabilities today with a readymade roadmap to proximity payments in the future;
• Designed the industry’s first and only true mobile consumer wallet solution, embedded on select AT&T handsets, that enables consumers to access, add and manage multiple financial relationships simply and securely on virtually any device, anywhere, anytime with a single password.

Previously, Rackley served as Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for nFront, Inc., a leading provider of full-service Internet banking solutions for financial institutions. Rackley built nFront from the ground-up and funded the company internally before taking venture capital in 1998.  He then led nFront to a successful Initial Public Offering in 1999 and subsequent sale to Digital Insight, now an Intuit company, in 2000.  With a comprehensive background in software development and banking technology, Mr. Rackley was responsible for nFront's overall vision and direction.  nFront's technology solution was the recipient of Microsoft's Best Internet Banking Solution and endorsed by the American Banker's Association.

Following Digital Insight, Rackley joined Noro-Moseley Partners from 2002 to mid-2005 as entrepreneur-in-residence.  Noro-Moseley is a leading venture capital firm in the southeast focused on technology and healthcare investments. As entrepreneur-in-residence, Rackley evaluated investments, advised portfolio companies and developed future strategic business opportunities that focused on transaction processing. 

Rackley currently serves as Chairman of the Board for BroadSource, Inc., a leading Telecom Expense Management software and services company. Under Rackley's direction, BroadSource  

Campbell B. ("Cam") Lanier, III

Cam is the Chairman of ITC Holding Company, LLC. Cam also serves as Senior Director for Kinetic Ventures. His investment activities focus on communications, software, and financial services. He sits on the Board of Immobili. Earlier in his career, he co-founded Interstate Communications (Telecom*USA), which was acquired by MCI for $1.2 billion in 1990. Cam was the founding investor and Chairman of Powertel (now T-Mobile), which was acquired by Deutsche Telecom for $4.2 billion in 2000. He was also the founding investor for Mindspring, which was valued at $1 billion at the time of its merger with Earthlink, and the founding investor in Firethorn, a mobile payments company that was acquired in the fall of 2007 by Qualcomm for over $200 million. In addition, Cam was the founding investor of ITC^DeltaCom, Knology and InterCall.