Chris Udall

A venture capitalist and ecosystem builder whose path into capital started far from any trading floor — building vocational and entrepreneurial schools for refugees in the Kingdom of Jordan through his nonprofit, Rebuild for Peace. From there it ran through Oxford (social entrepreneurship), Notre Dame, an early startup acquisition in Seattle, and growth-strategy consulting, before a LinkedIn "easy apply" landed him in Huntsville running an AgTech accelerator. Today he manages a $15M evergreen fund through Innovate Alabama — the state's only public-private innovation partnership — and just launched the $5M Capital Access Fund to pull outside venture capital into the state and keep founders rooted where they build.

A hunter from a long line of frontiersmen — third-great-grandson of Cowboy Hall of Fame diplomat Jacob Hamblin — who came to it on his own at 16, chasing coyotes and rabbits in Arizona, then learned to hunt deer and elk from an 80-something family member in the mountains near Glacier while managing a Montana farm. That season turned him into someone who cares about where food actually comes from. He's hunted elk in Oregon over hand-loaded, custom-machined ammunition, hogs in the mountains of Oahu, and red stag and fallow deer abroad — and he uses hunting and fly fishing as his hard reset, the one place his problem-solving brain finally goes quiet.

Chris sits exactly where the show lives — at the seam between building wealth and designing a life worth living. He explains what venture capital actually does (Shark Tank, minus the rules), why he bets on founder grit and coachability over the originality of the idea, and why a second-time founder who has failed is worth more than a first-timer who got lucky. Then he draws the throughline to the backcountry: preparation, resource allocation, and clear decisions under pressure and fatigue are the same skill whether you're stalking an elk or pitching a fund. His core conviction — the only real failure is the decision to stop trying.