Ira S. Weiss, managing director, has been an active investor in private companies for the past 15 years, and teaches entrepreneurship and accounting at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business. Ira's primary investing interests are technology-enabled consumer and business services, and healthcare IT. He serves on various boards including Concerro (www.concerro.com), which provides software to hospitals for effective staffing, and Retel Technologies (www.reteltechnologies.com) which provides analytics for video surveillance. He started his career as an accountant at Coopers and Lybrand, and received both his MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Matthew Rhodes-Kropf, senior advisor, is an associate professor of finance and economics at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business specializing in venture capital.  Matt is a highly respected expert on venture capital financing, and is an award winning teacher of entrepreneurial finance at Columbia.  Matt founded the RK Ventures group in 1997 to make investments in promising early-stage companies, and has been actively involved in each company funded by the RK group.  Matt currently serves on the board of Avid Radiopharmaceuticals, and has been instrumental in several of the successful investments made by the RK group.   In his academic work, he has published widely in the top finance journals, particularly on alternative investment, governance and Mergers and Acquisitions.  He received his M.A. and PhD from Duke University in economics.

Richard Najuch, Associate