Paul A. Gompers
Paul, the Roy and Elizabeth Simmons Professor of Business Administration and Director of Research at the Harvard Business School, has investigated and participated in the venture capital and private equity industry for the past fifteen years.
After growing up in St. Louis, he received his A.B. Summa Cum Laude in Biology from Harvard College. After spending a year working as a research biochemist for Bayer Chemical AG, he attended Oxford University on a Marshall Fellowship where he received an M.Sc. in Economics. He completed his Ph.D. in Business Economics at Harvard University.
Paul spent two years as an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business, the University of Chicago where he created a new course entitled "Entrepreneurial Finance and Management." His course development efforts at the Harvard Business School focus on issues affecting entrepreneurial firms and venture capitalists.
Dr. Gompers' research has explored risk and return in private equity, compensation of venture capital managers, as well as the factors influencing the success of venture capital and private equity managers. His more than two dozen research papers have been published in many academic journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, Brookings Proceedings on Economic Activity, Journal of Private Equity, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Law and Economics. He is also co-author of three books on the venture capital industry.
During his career, Paul has served as a consultant to many top venture capital firms, leading technology start-ups, Fortune 500 corporations, as well as the Federal Government.
Paul is an avid runner. During college, he was an All-American and set the Harvard records for 5,000 and 10,000 meters. He has represented the United States in both track and cross country and was an alternate on the 1988 Olympic team in the marathon. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and three daughters.