+ Biography

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After graduating from TED Private High-School in 1999, Tolga studied Statistics and Computer Science at Baskent University. During his college years, Tolga was the team captain of “Baskent KNIGHTS”; one of the first Turkish National Football League teams. Tolga was also a co-founding team member of the Turkish Amateur American Football League which was adopted by the Ministry of Sports of the Turkish Government in 2006. 

Tolga worked at CE Technology in Ankara and started his professional career in digital technologies. He mainly worked on government's software development projects & websites  until he decided to move to San Diego to receive a post-graduate diploma in Interactive Media Design & Animation, and to play college football as one of the first Turkish athletes at Palomar College / San Marcos, California. 

In 2007, Tolga was recruited by Spin Master Studios in Los Angeles. As one of the first creative hires of Spin Master Studios, he led the company's digital design initiatives and he co-designed “Tech Deck Live” - one of the first browser based 3D MMO games. Currently, Spin Master is the largest global kid's entertainment company based in Canada. After 4 years of gaining experience at Spin Master, Tolga designed and directed the development of dozens of digital applications, games, and marketing campaigns for brands like Ford,  Google, Spotify, MTV™, Cinemax, Warner Records, Disney, and Marriott Hotels while leading the interactive teams of Sabertooth and HYFN. His campaign creations for Ford Mustang  led him to win the "Digital Advertisement of the Year 2011" title by Yahoo.com. 

Having already worked with multiple  digital agencies, Tolga moved onto mastering his marketing skills as the  Head of Global User acquisitions initiative at Electronic Arts  where he created the promotional campaigns of  Battlefield™, Sims™, NBA Live™, Need For Speed™, Real Racing™, Fifa Soccer™, Madden NFL™, Tetris™ and Simpson’s Tapped Out™. Tolga Onuk also designed the EA Mobile's consumer-facing brand in 2012.

In 2013, Tolga started his entrepreneurial journey and co-founded Curbstand. Tolga designed Curbstand’s brand and the cross-device payments platform which emerged as the first SaaS solution for the valet & parking companies. The early stage mobility startup received  $1.1 Million investment immediately after the AppStore launch. While building Curbstand, Tolga established Thunderbolt Studios  headquarters in Beverly Hills. Later on, Curbstand expanded into the 8 most populated cities in the United States, parked 1 million cars (by 2016), and the company raised $6.9 Million total investments from angel investors & VC firms. 

In 2014, Tolga Onuk became the Chief Product Officer of California’s first legally approved Cannabis On-Demand Delivery startup  “Grassp”, and Thunderbolt built an extensive cross-device SaaS platform. Similar to Curbstand, Grassp received $1.5M investment shortly after the beta version release. 

Today, both Curbstand and Grassp are operational private companies based in Southern California. 

As a product design and development powerhouse, Thunderbolt worked with 40+ startups, built many MVP applications and the company helped to raise $8.5M combined seed investments. Thunderbolt  also built web & mobile applications for global brands like Beats By Dre, Verizon Wireless, and Alaska Airlines. As a leading digital product development company, Thunderbolt Studios hosted several technology events in the Greater Los Angeles area. In 2015, Tolga Onuk received 3 Best of Industry awards from IAC for the digital campaigns created for FOX Sports, and his company was featured as an industry leader by Clutch. 

In 2018, Tolga Onuk launched an equity-crowdfunding platform called Thunderbolt CDG with the intention of raising capital for digital startups. Thunderbolt CDG was acquired by the Toronto-based New Wave Holdings (Formerly known as New Wave Esports). After his company was acquired, Tolga Onuk was appointed as the Managing Partner and Chief Executive Officer of New Wave Esports, and he continued building Thunderbolt CDG in order to raise capital for esports teams. As a gaming and technology industry veteran, he kickstarted a new acquisition strategy for New Wave and the company made multiple investments into various technology and eSports startups. Under Tolga’s leadership, New Wave started a reverse merger and became a publicly traded company on the Canadian Stock Exchange in October 2019. After the 2020 lockdowns many eSports tournaments got cancelled and, New Wave Holdings started investing in other emerging industries. 

After 15 years, Tolga Onuk played semi-professional (Grid-Iron) football as a part of Long Beach-based Beach City Giants football team on the 2022-2023 Spring Season and he became the first Türk American football player to win a U.S. National Championship (3AAFNT - Semi-Pro National Sunshine Bowl). He officially represented the Turkish National (American) Football Federation in the USA between 2018-2023 and he continues to help the growth of Football in Türkiye.

Currently, Tolga Onuk is an early investor in multiple publicly traded companies, and he is working towards promoting sustainable energy projects in the e-mobility sector. The last product that Tolga delivered in a joint project at Envoy Mobility was acquired on April 2023 by Blink Charging (NASDAQ: BLNK) for $34M. In his previous role, Tolga was leading product and marketing operations at Loop Global which helped the startup company to secure $65M Series A funding from prominent investors like Fifth Wall.

Tolga lives in California, USA.