Eric Olson

Current

Founder at TECH cocktail, LLC

Past

Associate at DFJ Portage Venture Partners
Research Associate at Harvard Business School
Partner Development at Google, Inc.

Business Development Associate at FeedBurner (acquired by Google in June 2007)
Investment Performance Analyst at Cambridge Associates, LLC

see less...

2 more...

Education

The University of Chicago - Booth School of Business
Bentley University

Recommended

9 people have recommended Eric

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Internet

Websites

Eric Olson’s Experience

Founder

TECH cocktail, LLC

(Internet industry)

May 2006 — Present (3 years 7 months)

I co-founded TECH cocktail with my friend Frank Gruber in order to form a venue for Chicago based technology entrepreneurs, engineers and other technology enthusiasts to interact and to get to know one another. This type of venue didn’t exist in Chicago and we were sure that was part of the reason that the region was lagging behind as a tech hub.

To date we have negotiated and secured over $125,000 in sponsorships from a number of companies including Google and Microsoft and we have grown the event in Chicago to over 600 attendees per quarter. Frank and I have also taken the event to a number of other cities including Washington, D.C., Champaign, IL and Boulder, CO just to name a few. Over the past three years Frank and I have put together roughly 19 events and have hosted well over 5,000 people along with showcasing over 50 new startups. We have also secured media coverage in the Washington Post, Time Out Chicago, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, Tech Crunch and many other outlets. Lastly, we have built a media property (techcocktail.com) that sees thousands of visitors per month.

Frank and I accepted the 2008 Illinois Technology Associations CityLIGHTS Award for our work with TECH cocktail. The award recipient is chosen by the entire Illinois technology community out of a large group of nominees and given to the people or persons who have made a lasting impact on the Illinois technology community.
Associate

DFJ Portage Venture Partners

(Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

February 2008 — June 2009 (1 year 5 months)

I joined DFJ Portage Venture Partners in February 2009 after deciding that a startup idea I was working on wasn’t going to be feasible. My responsibilities at DFJ Portage were expanding our presence in the Midwest, acting as a spokesperson for the firm, seeking out new entrepreneurial talent and new technologies in the Midwest and reviewing and completing due diligence on potential investments.

During my tenure at DFJ Portage I have successfully formed strong and lasting relationships with a number of university technology departments including the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan. I have also identified the key players and up and coming entrepreneurs and technologists in regions DFJ Portage had not yet explored (i.e. Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa) and have solidified relationships with them. Lastly, I have served as a judge, speaker and organizer for a number of events including the Midwest Alternative Energy Venture Forum (steering committee member and judge) and the Annual Collaboration for Entrepreneurship in Michigan (judge and speaker) along with about a dozen others. My involvement with these events has brought DFJ Portage further into the spotlight as the Midwest’s premier venture firm and has grown the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Midwest.

Through all of these activities I have sourced close to 25 potential investment opportunities for DFJ Portage. I also completed various stages of diligence on those deals as well as about 50 more including some basic modeling and primary research. In the last year we completed one deal that I was part of from initial diligence to investment and acted as a board observer.
Research Associate

Harvard Business School

(Educational Institution; Higher Education industry)

September 2007 — September 2008 (1 year 1 month)

Researched and co-authored "Lather, Rinse, Repeat: FeedBurner's Serial Founding Team" with Noam Wasserman for Wasserman's HBS entrepreneurship class. This case is the capstone case for the course. I worked on this in my spare time (i.e. it was not a full time position).
Partner Development

Google, Inc.

(Public Company; GOOG; Internet industry)

June 2007 — September 2007 (4 months)

I remained with FeedBurner/Google after the acquisition through September of 2007 and during that time I planned and conducted information sessions with Google employees to educate them on RSS feeds and on FeedBurner. I also organized information sessions for FeedBurner publishers to educate them on the acquisition and what it would mean for them.

I then left FeedBurner/Google in order to focus on a startup idea I was working through. After pushing through the business plan for four months I determined is was not something I wanted to pursue. At that time I was contacted by the partners at DFJ Portage Venture Partners and was asked to join them as an Associate Director. I accepted that position and joined them in February 2008.
Business Development Associate

FeedBurner (acquired by Google in June 2007)

(Privately Held; Internet industry)

November 2005 — June 2007 (1 year 8 months)

Joined the company about six months after the B round of funding to work directly with the V.P. of Business Development focused on publisher development and recruitment. I personally negotiated partnerships with leading publishers including Seeking Alpha, PopSugar, VentureBeat, PSFK, Raw Story, Outside the Beltway, GigaOm, Simply Recipes, Space.com, Scientific American and many others. I also managed the accounts of some of the largest FeedBurner publishers including Reuters, Dow Jones, USA Today, Conde Nast and others. Given that FeedBurner was a startup I took on many tasks outside of my main area of responsibility including representing the company at trade shows, speaking at industry conferences on behalf of the company and working with product development to prioritize new product features.

RSS feeds under management grew from about 50,000 to 500,000 during my tenure and subscribers to feeds grew from 500k to more than 21mm during that same time. This growth lead to a successful acquisition of FeedBurner by Google in June 2007.
Investment Performance Analyst

Cambridge Associates, LLC

(Privately Held; Financial Services industry)

August 2004 — November 2005 (1 year 4 months)

I was responsible for the management of, and reporting on, over 17 venture capital and private equity portfolios for large institutional investors. I was also responsible for analyzing over 170 venture capital funds each quarter. Lastly, I took on additional roles including: U.S. Early Stage Venture Capital Specialist, Interview Team Member and main liaison to the Cambridge Associates Washington D.C. office. The latter position allowed me to work closely with the D.C. office to improve communications between both offices and to better educate the D.C. office on venture capital and private equity (The D.C. office was focused on traditional public equities portfolios.).

Eric Olson’s Education

The University of Chicago - Booth School of Business

MBA , Economics, Marketing & Entrepreneurship , 2009 — 2011 (expected)

- 2010 Chicago Microfinance Conference: Organizing Committee Member
- Took "Intro to Microfinance" class offered to Booth students via the Haas School of Business (7 week course that sits outside the main Booth curriculum)
- Served as a mentor to the class that entered in the summer of 2009.

Activities and Societies:

Emerging Markets Group, Net Impact Club, Venture Capital & Entrepreneurship Club, Innovation Club, Booth Marketing Club
Bentley University

B.S. , Finance , 2000 — 2004

Activities and Societies:

Bentley Honor Society, Bentley Investment Group, President's List, Graduated Magna Cum Laude