Alston Gardner was the founder and managing partner of Fulcrum Ventures, the predecessor to Fulcrum Equity Partners.  Founded in 2001, Fulcrum Ventures invested in notable successes including SaaSOptics, Bandwidth (NASDAQ), Sageworks, Ibotta and Compliance 360.

Alston was the founder and CEO of OnTarget, Inc. prior to its acquisition by Siebel Systems in 1999. Under his leadership, OnTarget grew from a start-up to the industry leader in tech sales force development with $75 million in revenue and 100+ professionals in fifteen countries. OnTarget’s clients included HP, Cisco, Dell, Microsoft, Oracle, Alcatel Siemens, IBM, and Xerox.

Alston holds a BA degree from the University of North Carolina (’77) and has attended executive programs at Harvard Business School, Stanford, UVA, and the Aspen Institute. He completed a post-baccalaureate certificate in psychology at Columbia University in 2011.

He taught Introduction to Sales in the BSBA and MBA programs at Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill from 2003-2008. He served on the Board of Trustees of UNC-Chapel Hill from 2007-2015 and was the Vice Chairman 2014-15. He is currently chair of the board of Hot Tubes Development Cycling, the top junior road cycling program in North America.