Charles Stack is a successful serial entrepreneur. After graduation from Case Western Reserve University Law School, he formed Parallax, Inc., which developed and marketed a PC-based networking case management software system for asbestos litigation to national law firms and corporate law departments.

​

In 1992, Charles started Books.com, the first online bookstore. In 1998, he founded Flashline to address the new opportunity in software components and web services. In 2000, Charles won the Infoworld E-Business Innovator Award for his contributions to Internet Retail along with Tim-Berners-Lee (WWW), Dr. James Gosling (Java), Jeff Hawkins (Palm Pilot), Richard Stallman (GNU), Times Howes (LDAP), and Phil Zimmerman (PGP).

​

Charles won the Ohio Venture Association (OVA) Venture of the Year award in 2007 and served on the OVA board until 2010. He has mentored and/or been a judge at numerous business plan and startup competitions including the recent Startup Weekend Cleveland and the 11 regional University iDeaLabs competition. He is a very frequent speaker at investment, startup, and entrepreneurship conferences as well as regularly sharing his experiences with classes of students at nearly every university in the region.