OUR STORY

Engineering PhDs from the University of Maryland’s Chemical Engineering Department teamed up with former Terps' and Ravens' Tight End Matt Furstenburg, and Entrepreneur Businessman Harry Geller in Summer 2012 to tackle one of the biggest problems with football gloves — the rapid decline in tackiness/grip of the gloves (especially after a trip through the washing machine!) 

Most football gloves lose their tackiness/grip quickly due to intense frictional contact...

... experienced throughout practices and games during the football season. Usually the grip on a pair of brand-new gloves wears down after just a few days of practice. Just how do you get them to keep their sticky grip?

Two years of iterative product development between football players and chemical engineers led to the creation of Grip Boost Football Gel — the first product to restore the sticky grip to football gloves without leaving any residue on the ball. Grip Boost is a patent-pending invention and currently licensed by Grip Boost Inc. from the University of Maryland’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC).

The development of the Grip Boost Football Gel has been supported by seed funding from the Maryland Innovation Initiative, The University of Maryland OTC, The VOLT Fund, TEDCO's Technology Commercialization Fund and private investment. Additionally, in Spring 2014, the Grip Boost technology was chosen from over 150 inventions as a Finalist for UMD's Invention of the Year. The successful partnership between science and athletics has led to the development of new products in other sports such as baseball and golf.

TEAM

Matt Furstenburg

  • Former NFL Player
  • Chief Executive Officer

Matt is a founder and one of the original inventors of Grip Boost. During his football career, he played tight end at the University of Maryland (2008-2012) and as a professional with the Baltimore Ravens (2013). Matt comes from a family of entrepreneurs and is passionate about business and sports.

Chanda Arya

  • Ph.D. Chemical Engineering
  • Chief Operating Officer

Chanda is a founder and one of the original inventors of Grip Boost. He’s a chemical engineer with expertise in biomaterials and surface functionalization chemistry. He received both his undergraduate and graduate chemical engineering degrees from the University of Maryland. Chanda has always been passionate about innovation & entrepreneurship and he is a huge Terps and Ravens fan.

Alex Langrock

  • Ph.D. Chemical Engineering
  • Chief Technical Officer

Alex oversees all manufacturing and new product development efforts at Grip Boost, ensuring each sticky grip product maintains the high-quality customers expect. He’s a chemical engineer with expertise in material synthesis and characterization. When not busy being an engineer, Alex can be found composing music, playing tennis, and taking photographs.

Kevin Diehn

  • M.S. Chemical Engineering
  • Executive Vice President

Kevin is a founder and one of the original inventors of Grip Boost. He’s a chemical engineer with expertise in stimuli responsive gels and biomaterials. He received both his undergraduate and graduate chemical engineering degrees from the University of Maryland. In 2014, he was a runner-up for the UMD Engineering Master's Thesis of the Year (2nd Place out of 350). 

Harry Geller

  • Experienced Entrepreneur & Angel Investor
  • Business Director

Harry is a co-founder of Grip Boost. As a successful serial entrepreneur (named Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 1992), Harry has owned and managed over fourteen multimillion dollar businesses, four that were named to INC. 500 list of fastest growing companies (including his first start-up company, Global Mail Inc., which was acquired by Deutsche Post in 1999). Harry also served as CEO of America’s Deutsche Post (1999-2004), which now operates under the DHL brand. Harry has seen the progression from idea to successful company many times over. His experience and business savvy guides the Grip Boost team in strategic penetration of their target markets. Harry received his B.S. in Business Management from the University of Maryland in 1981.

Srinivasa Raghavan

  • Professor of Chemical Engineering
  • Chief Scientific Advisor

Dr. Raghavan is a Patrick and Marquerite Sung Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Maryland. He is the principal investigator of the Complex Fluids and Nanomaterials Laboratory. He has authored over 100 technical papers in peer reviewed journals and is a recipient of a 2004 National Science Foundation (NSF) Career Award for his work in self-assembled stimuli-responsive nanomaterials.

INVESTOR RELATIONS

Please email support@gripboost.com for more information.