10 Things You Didn’t Know about Gary Cardone

Gary Cardone is set to speak at Disrupt the Bay on February 4th at Marriott Water Street Collection in Tampa. He is one of the lead “sharks” on what Disrupt calls the “Tampa Tank” at Disrupt the Bay, along with Kevin Harrington, Rudy Mawer, and Jay Goss. 

1. Gary Cardone was born and raised in Lake Charles, LA, son of stockbroker Curtis Cardone and mother Concetta Neil (daughter of an immigrant from Sicily).

2. Gary Cardone joined startup, Natural Gas Clearinghouse in 1987, #12 employee, and would help it become Fortune 30 Dynegy after joining the company in 1987 after doing mergers with Morgan Stanley, BG plc and Chevron and then going public.

3. Gary Cardone moved to London in 1992. He was the architect of the UK’s National Balancing Point, known today as one of the most reliable energy trading hubs in the world. Gary would build two large businesses between 92 and 02 for Dynegy and would become known as one of the most successful trading company’s in Europe controlling all the storage in the UK, employing over 600 staff, and doing 4 billion in revenue per year.

4. Gary Cardone sold all his stock on one afternoon in 2001, and retired from Energy in 2002, predicting a decade long unwinding of energy trading firms from the impact of mark-to-market abuses by Enron and others. He returned to the USA, moving to Los Angeles, California.

5. In 2008 he became strategic commercial adviser to Arclight Capital, a prestigious PE firm focused on energy infrastructure in the USA and Europe.

6. In 2012, Cardone assisted friend / founder of AP&G an energy wholesaler into structuring a transaction with EDF (largest power company in the world) using a unique construct designed to vertically integrate the firm. This move would help build a company that yields 72 million per year of net income for over a decade.

7. At the same time he became seed investor of Cardone Capital (twin brother Grant Cardone’s large mulit-dwelling investment vehicle). Cardone Capital is one of the largest independent holders of multi-dwelling real estate in the USA, where he continues to hold a position.

8. In 2012, Cardone founded Global E-Trading, and funded Chargebacks911, a fraud technology company designed to FIX the 1/2 trillion dollar per year disputes issue plaguing the credit card industry. CB911 would help build an entire industry focused on chargeback disputes, and became ‘the gold standard’ of all dispute firms, providing its technology to some of the largest banks, and merchants in the world.

9. In 2022, Cardone formed Card1Ventures, to invest in Blockchain technology, and digital assets (currencies).  Months after forming Card1, becomes the lead investor in Node40, Inc, a Delaware firm, focused on accounting, tracing, and tracking of digital assets around the world. Node40 deals with some of the largest accounting, tax firms, regulatory bodies and financial institutions in the world.

9. Cardone lives on an island outside of St . Petersburg’s / Tampa area, has two daughters, and travels prolifically helping entrepreneurs, founders and businesses scale in a profitable and sustainable manner.

10. He is an avid skier, fisherman, and gambler, with a great interest in history and religion.

Where to see Gary Cardone Speak, Next

Looking to see Gary Cardone in action, in person, and live? 

The Tampa Tank boasts the best of the best in the US Southeast and in 2023 GuidePoint Security is the title sponsor. Over two hundred founders have been vetted to appropriately bring the top 5-7 potential unicorns to showcase their products at the Tampa Tank. 

These pitches will have live negotiations led by Kevin Harrington, Gary Cardone, Rudy Mawer, and Jay Goss. Kevin Harrington is known as the original shark from the hit tv series, Shark Tank.

Gary Cardone is also a renown international investor and entrepreneur and although his ventures have been predominantly in energy and fintech, he looks to potentially add a health tech Tampa Unicorn to his portfolio. Jay Goss, General Partner of Wavemaker Three-Sixty Health, will also be flying in from Los Angeles to partake in the deal flow. Jay’s portfolio is very niche within health-tech and has a proven track record growing early stage companies.