Jason was one of the few married business school friends I had in Philly. I admired how he and his wife worked together through all the moves and changes a young Army family experiences. Jason and I shared a love for beach volleyball and found ourselves playing on an indoor team stacked with former collegiate players. Other teams would show up to tourneys wearing Goldman Sachs-sponsored unis while we’d roll in on an RV, sleep in the parking lot, and show up to the games squeezed into our high school and college jerseys. Life’s too short to take yourself too seriously…and we never did. But we always won which was never as important as having fun.
Jason’s leadership on and off the court has always left an impression on me. After business school, he worked on Wall St. and demonstrated a work ethic I’d never seen…ever. He was a beast putting in the hours to prove that he could make the transition as an Army Ranger into the corporate world. And he did.
We have too many stories to share in this episode, but I know you’ll gain some important insights from our chat!
Jason Hodell is the CEO of Skullcandy, the original youth audio lifestyle brand based in
Park City, Utah. In 2020, Skullcandy was #2 to Apple in total headphones/earphones
sold in North America, and the leader in units and total dollars sold at < $100 MSRPs.
Skullcandy is globally distributed in over ninety countries with offices in Park City,
Vancouver, Shenzhen, and London. Prior to this role, he was the CFO/COO of
Skullcandy and helped lead the company through its public company life (Nasdaq:
SKUL) and the subsequent 2016 “take-private” transaction with Mill Road Capital.
Prior to joining Skullcandy, Jason was the CFO of Shopzilla/Bizrate, the largest family of
comparison shopping engines (CSEs) in global Internet retailing, the CFO / COO of
Move Networks, an IPTV technology pioneer acquired by EchoStar Corporation in 2010
to create SlingTV, and, earlier in his career, Jason was the Senior Director of Business
Operations at Digex (Nasdaq: DIGX), a cloud-computing and data center pioneer
acquired by MCI (now Verizon Business) in 2003 for ~$230m in firm value.
Prior to Digex, Jason was in the Technology Investment Banking group of JPMorgan,
focused on communications technology mergers and acquisitions and initial public
offerings. He later served as portfolio manager at Plainview Capital for five years,
ranked multiple times by BNY Mellon among the top 10 performing domestic small-cap-
value equity funds.
Jason received his B.S. in Economics (Mathematical) from the United States Military
Academy at West Point and then served for five years as an Infantry Officer in the U.S.
Army. Jason earned his MBA in Finance from the Wharton School, University of
Pennsylvania.
