Troy Carter is the CEO and Founder of Atom Factory. He is credited with building and managing the careers of superstars such as Lady Gaga, John Legend and Meghan Trainor. In addition to managing artists, Carter is a General Partner and Founder of Cross Culture Ventures, a venture fund that invests in entrepreneurs and early stage startups committed to forging the future of technology and consumer products . Possessing a proven instinct for identifying promising startups, Carter has been an early investor in several unicorn companies such as Spotify, Lyft, Uber, DropBox and Warby Parker. In 2013, Carter launched SMASHD – a multimedia platform designed to be the definitive voice for today's generation of disruptive creators. SMASHD aims to inspire a new breed of entrepreneurs and innovators through original content that captures the ethos of multicultural millennials actively creating and shaping culture. In 2015, Carter introduced SMASHD LABS, a 10-week accelerator program for early stage startups across industries.
In its inaugural year, Carter invested in 5 diverse companies, expanding from global file sharing and e-commerce, to a music curation and discovery platform.