Glen Dakan has served for 20 years active duty and drilling reserve as a Naval Aviator and special forces air strike planner, completing two tours in Iraq flying combat missions (on the same crew as our CEO Jon “Pocahontas” Smith), a counter-narcotics deployment in South America, and a counter-terrorism deployment as an Air Strike Officer in several Middle Eastern countries. Now as a Commander in the Navy Selected Reserve, his second career is an entrepreneur and venture advisor.
Glen is a serial entrepreneur having founded and grown ventures in biotech and infectious disease testing, B2B technology solutions, eCommerce, and automotive. His ventures have bootstrapped to $20MM in national sales, and Glen has raised over $2MM in venture capital. His ventures have been nationally featured in Business Insider, Inc., and in local outlets such as Kansas City Business Journal.
For Blue Venture Advisors, Glen’s role combines his DoD and business experience with his science education and background. He has worked to develop DoD Contracting Officer relationships in his Navy career. He is our medical PPE, telehealth, and lab diagnostics SME with a Pre-Med and Neuroscience degree, having 5 years’ experience in marketing and selling diagnostics and lab supplies and 11 years in the technology industry. He is using his large scale business development experience for structuring large contracting deals with US Government buyers, having previously developed a joint venture for 16 state Medical Services group, as well as negotiated and signed national partnerships with American Express (Fortune 500), Cox Automotive ($21B annual revenue), and Carfax (national market leader). His finance background offers Blue Venture Advisor’s suppliers a financial modeling and venture capital / non-dilutive funding structuring expertise.
Glen holds a BS from Vanderbilt University, earned an MBA and an MS in Finance with high honors from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University-Bloomington, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level II Candidate. He has every FAA airplane qualification possible including Airline Transport Pilot – Multi-Engine and is a Multi-engine Instructor Pilot.
Glen is married to Kelli, and they have two children, Charlotte (13), and Tyler (10) and live in Kansas City, MO.
