Drake

Erica Drake is the founder and CEO of Maverick Entrepreneurs – a revolutionary entrepreneurial educational and cloud-based funding platform. She is a veteran entrepreneur, business coach and author of the highly acclaimed 360-page text book: Maverick Entrepreneurs' Complete Battle Guide to Raising Capital. Erica is a pragmatic leader with over 20 years of executive-level and entrepreneurial experience. Her executive level positions include: National Sales Manager, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for a Worldwide Cruise Line; and then President and CEO of her four different companies.

Entrepreneurial Background. Erica’s leadership career began in executive-level positions in sales and marketing in the travel industry, where she is known as a maverick for her innovative ideas, personal passion and sales and marketing achievements. At the age of 29, Erica left the cruise lines to become an entrepreneur and founded, funded and was president of three different travel start-up companies where she raised millions of dollars for her companies’ growth through both debt and equity investors. Erica went on to develop innovative sales and marketing business models that revolutionized the travel/cruise industry. Her aggressive attitude, pioneering ideas and relentless zeal placed her companies as industry leaders in direct sales of travel. Erica's accomplishments include: closing national deals with every major cruise line and travel supplier; developing a national direct sales team of 1,000’s which closed $22M+ in sales and built a sales pipeline in excess of $175M+ within its first six months of operations.

Consulting with Entrepreneurs on their Capital-Raising Quest. Erica learned the language investors, the process of raising capital, and how to network with and close an investor prospect with mutually acceptable terms while funding her own 3 companies. After selling her third company, Erica developed an entrepreneurial consulting business where (for almost a decade) she helped entrepreneurs at every stage of development and in most verticals to raise the capital they needed for success. To date, Erica has assisted her clients in bringing in terms sheets in excess of $200M++. It was after this extensive experience that Erica created Maverick. Erica is a graduate of the University of Paris– Sorbonne and George Mason University, where she earned a BA in French and speaks French fluently. Erica lives in the St. Petersburg, Florida area.