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Robert Wolfe describes his company Zeck in one brutally efficient line: “We’re reimagining the entire miserable, archaic board meeting process.” After building and selling two companies with his brother Jeffrey Wolfe — outdoor retailer Moosejaw to Walmart and charitable giving platform Crowdrise to GoFundMe, where the brothers partnered with investor/actor Edward Norton — Wolfe realized his personal experiences with boardroom pain weren’t unique. “We thought we were the only ones who were having this challenge,” he told Entrepreneur, “and it wasn’t until after our companies were acquired that we realized this angst we were having was universal.”
The problem: Traditional board decks are 300-page PDFs that no one can easily read on their phone, are filled with backward-looking reporting and inspire very little strategic conversation. “For all participants, it was a valueless process,” Wolfe says of his earlier companies’ board meetings. Zeck, he says, was built to flip that model by letting leadership teams plug in their existing data (Google Sheets, Excel, and more), then using AI to pull out exactly what a specific board or investor will care about most. The final product is presented in a format that “looks a lot more like an article you’d read on your website than a slide deck.”
Fast and fun culture
Wolfe’s third startup is built around two simple company culture rules: move fast and have fun. “We realized we’ll probably never be the smartest, but it’s a lot easier to be the fastest,” he says, noting that customers and investors can expect replies within 24 hours, “and more likely within an hour,” even if he’s “flying to Greece.” Speed, he says, is an edge any entrepreneur can adopt: you may not always be able to outthink the competition, but you can out-respond them.
The second pillar—fun—isn’t just fluff. It’s a productivity strategy. “The truth is, if you’re having fun, you’re going to do a better job,” he explains. At Zeck, weekly sales and customer success meetings end with trivia or math questions, where the winner doesn’t get a generic gift card, but might win a DustBuster as a prize. To underscore their philosophy, a quote from the movie The Wedding Crashers appears on the homepage: “When it stops being fun, break something.”
It’s a move from his Crowdwise playbook that served the company well. “Our slogan was, ‘If you don’t give back, no one will like you,’” he laughs. The lesson: injecting humor into serious spaces makes your message stick.
Edward Norton, co-founder and power user
When you think of Edward Norton, you are probably picturing him in his day job as an Oscar-nominated actor, but at Zeck, he’s a co-founder, operator, and, as Wolfe describes it, “a product obsessive.” They originally teamed up on Crowdrise alongside Norton’s now-wife, producer Shauna Robertson, whose credits include Anchorman and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The idea for Zeck actually came during a trip they took together, when Wolfe ducked away for a three-hour board meeting on Zoom. He came back and told the group, “That was the most miserable three hours,” and told Norton the experience was like the scene in Fight Club where “you were punching yourself in the face.”
The conversation set the Zeck journey in motion, and Wolfe says Norton’s ongoing role could not be further from a celebrity endorsement. “First, he’s so fucking smart, it’s crazy,” Wolfe says. “He’s very strategic and hands-on,” adding that Norton also understands that building a business involves a fair degree of grinding it out. “I’m a big believer in luck,” says Wolfe. “And having Edward as a partner is very, very lucky.”
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