Paul Gompers
Non-Executive DIRECTOR,
CO-FOUNDEr (2001)
Paul, the Eugene Holman Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, has investigated and participated in the venture capital and private equity industry for the past 25 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.
Paul was a director of Knightsbridge Advisers, where he and the other founders of decided to form Spur and concentrate on venture capital, believing that these investments finance the next generation of firms that will change the world.
Paul is married to Jody Dushay. They live in Newton, MA, and have three daughters Sivan, Annika, and Zoe. He also set and still holds the American Junior Record in the Marathon (1983).
