BuzzPal.com

About Chris Comella

What makes him tick...?

Who the heck is this guy?!

Born in Washington, DC (May 1969) and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, Chris went to college in Rockville, Maryland ("Yale on the Rail") Tampa, Florida (he loves the beach) and Fort Collins, Colorado (he loves the mountains more).

From 1994 to 2004, Chris lived in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC, then sold his co-op and moved to the Kalorama neighborhood, where he lived until 2006, when he moved to Sweden. Chris loves Sweden, but he and his wife, Susanne, will go where their journey takes them.

In 1998, Chris entered the MBA program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, graduating in 2000. During and after the MBA years, Chris worked on the deal team of a venture finance firm called MCG Capital (media, telecom, publishing, technology).  He joined the firm soon after its founding, receiving stock and options, which came into the money in 2001, when MCG went public on the NASDAQ.  Chris cashed out in 2003, sold all his stock, and took the summer off, traveling in the USA and Europe.

In January 2003, Chris had his first date with a lovely Swedish woman named Susanne (her original Match.com photo), who was living in Washington and studying at a local university. They met online and are now married (pic from when Chris "popped the question," at the "jumping cliffs," where Chris and his friends partied and cliff jumped in and after high school). Thus ended Chris's 8-year online dating experiment (highly recommended, at least if you like meeting new people and/or live in a fun city like Washington, DC).

After MCG, Chris joined CFC, a $20-billion finance company, as an Associate Vice President - Structured Finance (not the bad kind: example 1, example 2), where he originated and oversaw over $1-billion in investments, including the largest deal in the company’s history. Chris left CFC in January, 2006, a few days before flying to beautiful Gothenburg, Sweden.

Throughout that time, Chris traded stocks and bought and sold multiple (small) real estate investments in multiple jurisdictions, achieving strong returns, including over 6x (30x equity) on the property he bought in 1994. In 2004, that property was listed with an agent who brought one lame offer. Chris "let her go" and sold the property with a website he built himself for a net 23% more than the original offer (luck). After that, Chris rented an apartment in Kalorama and began unwinding the rest of his real estate investments. He sold his last three properties (lots in Montana) in 2005, 2007, and 2008. The 2008 sale was ratified the day before the stock market began its worst week ever. Chris is looking to buy again in late 2009 or 2010.

After CFC, Chris moved to Europe to discover, travel, enjoy, and reinvent.  It’s been amazing.  Most of his time has been spent managing his investments, experimenting with whacky ideas, and traveling, including to many points in Europe, from the bottom (Sicily) to the top (above the Arctic Circle in Norway and Sweden).  You can see some of Chris's pictures here.

In Europe, Chris has been to many conference and meet-ups, including:

Chris has made lot of new friends and connections through these events and through Twitter. He almost always stays with locals he meets online or through his friends and contacts. You can see a 1-minute music video of some of those people and places here.

Right now Chris is working on BuzzPal ® The World Is Your Party ® (http://buzzpal.com).  See BuzzPal's first videos here (needs work -- they say "build one to throw away," right!).

Contact Chris at: buzzpal.com/contact

Some of Chris's other web presences:

Read more (if you dare or care): What makes him tick?
 
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