Entrepreneurship
Blue Box Light began in middle school. Filmwerk followed in high school.
At Filmwerk I ran sales, client relationships, production, finance and operations.
CEO | PRESIDENT | COO
Builder. Integrator. Operator.
Building organizations that outperform their complexity.
As President and COO I have run companies with the full P&L: strategy, product and technology, commercial, finance, legal and people. In the last five years I have taken three companies through a change of ownership.
Mark BednarskiAtlanta, Georgia
The companies I lead best
I enjoy leading companies where growth has outpaced the operating model that built them, and that is where I do my best work. It happens at different moments: a new owner, an acquisition to integrate, a founder ready to hand over, a commercial engine that has to scale, or AI that has to work in daily operations.
Those moments require more than strategy. They require leadership capable of aligning people, technology, execution and capital into a stronger operating system.
At that point the company needs one person who makes the calls across all of it and owns the result. That is the job I enjoy most and do best.
Formation
The work started before the titles.
I founded my first company in middle school and my second in high school, while competing as an elite athlete. Running a business as a teenager taught me to own the whole thing early.
Engineering
Mechanical engineering, computer science and business gave me a disciplined way to read complex systems.
I look for the constraint first and simplify around it.
Athletics
Competition taught me that preparation and measurement compound.
Today I coach youth athletes and officiate as a starter in track and cross country. Now and then I still race as a Masters runner.
How I think
Companies are living systems.
Their performance reflects how well people, decisions, money and execution connect.
Architecture over effort
A company holds up when everyone knows who decides what, who is accountable, and when problems come up for review.
I redesigned operating responsibilities, shared services, security and fulfillment, and integrated the business into Fanatics.
Interfaces create value
Companies usually fail where functions meet, so that is where I spend my time.
I put Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, People, Commercial, Communications and biomechanical research on one operating agenda and took the company through its sale.
Technology should simplify
Technology and AI earn their place when they improve a decision, a customer outcome or the cost of running the business.
We simplified the product portfolio from 20 to 3 and moved 80% of customers to the cloud in two years.
Value is built operationally
Enterprise value shows up in what a buyer checks: retention, delivery, and a finance function that can explain the numbers.
We took fulfillment from multiple weeks to a same-day SLA in three months.
Operating chapters
Different industries. A consistent pattern.
Build, simplify, integrate, commercialize, and lead through ownership transition.
President & COO
Full P&L, with Product, Engineering, Legal, Finance, HR, Sales and Business Development, Communications and Marketing, and Biocore reporting to me. I rebuilt go-to-market, FP&A, the product portfolio and decision rights. Integrated AI, computer vision, real-time video and data, biomechanical research, hardware and service operations deployed across all 30 NFL stadiums, and extended and expanded the NFL agreements. Owned transaction preparation, led diligence, co-led negotiation and close, and led the sale to Exos in October 2025.
The greatest value comes from integrating capabilities, not optimizing them in isolation.
Chief Operating Officer
Full P&L before the sale, with Product, Operations, Robotics, Legal, Finance, HR, Sales and Business Development, Security and IT reporting to me. More than $450M in annual GMV and more than $1B in appraised assets under custody. Took fulfillment from multiple weeks to a same-day SLA in three months. Led preparation and diligence for the 2023 sale to Fanatics, then the integration into Fanatics Collectibles.
Acquisition creates ownership. Integration creates one company.
VP Product, then SVP Product & Technology
Owned product strategy, pricing and go-to-market. Simplified the product portfolio from 20 to 3 and moved 80% of customers to the cloud in two years. Launched a dedicated-enterprise cloud that booked $15M in new SaaS ARR well within its first year. Net revenue retention reached 122%. Led Product and Technology through the 2021 ownership transition to Banneker Partners.
What cannot be seen cannot be intentionally improved.
In the boardroom
I have worked with boards from the management side at all three companies: a board observer at iGrafx, a voting ex-officio member at PWCC, and an ex-officio seat at Infinite Athlete, where I ran the board meetings at the investors' request. I also serve on three startup advisory boards.
A useful board helps both the leader and the company grow. That is the board I want to report to, and the kind I want to sit on.
Track record
Evidence before claims.
3Ownership
Transitions
Transitions
$450M+Marketplace
GMV
GMV
$1B+Assets Under
Custody
Custody
$15MNew SaaS
ARR
ARR
Weeks toSame-DayFulfillment
Transformation
Transformation
Execution is measured in production.
Super Bowl operations at the Superdome.
Writing
Recent writing
I write twice a week on LinkedIn about running companies through growth and ownership change.
- The buck stops with you. Decision rights tell you whose phone rings when something breaks. What happens next depends on whether that person shows up.
- Twice now, a founder has asked me to run the company while they stayed its CEO.
- Our fulfillment took weeks. Three months later it was same-day, without adding a square foot.
Current focus
Today I advise companies through B7i and serve on three startup advisory boards.