Rob Adams

About Rob Adams

Rob Adams is an Executive Director with Alumni Ventures, where he founded both Congress Avenue Ventures and Ring Ventures, venture funds focused on the University of Texas and Texas A&M communities.He has been active in the venture business for 30 years and previously he was on the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin where he taught entrepreneurship in the MBA program and was the Director of Texas Venture Labs. He’s a former software executive, entrepreneur and institutional fund manager. He has served on many corporate boards and has founded or financed more than 300 companies and raised significant amounts of capital in both public and private markets. Prior to his appointment at The University of Texas, he was in the venture capital industry, ultimately founding AV Labs, a fund affiliated with Austin Ventures. Prior to the venture business, he was a software operating executive for two decades. This career included positions in sales, marketing and general management. He was with Lotus (NYSE: IBM), joining the company shortly after its public offering. Adams was their first corporate sales representative and went on to be instrumental in the development and launch of both 1-2-3 for Macintosh and Lotus Notes. He founded and was CEO of Business Matters, a venture backed developer of financial modeling products that was acquired. He was an executive with Pervasive Software (NASDAQ: PVSW), a company he helped take public.Dr. Adams holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, where he received their Outstanding Engineer Award, a Masters of Business Administration from Babson College\'s Olin School of Management, and a Ph.D. in Management from Capella University. He is an internationally recognized speaker on innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship. He has keynoted the Inc. 500 business conference, international venture conferences, and consults for numerous global 500 companies. His work has been covered in Business Week, Forbes, Fortune, Money, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, on Bloomberg Radio, Public Television and public radio’s nationally syndicated “Marketplace” program.

Experience

1. Founder and Managing Partner

   Congress Avenue Ventures An Alumni Ventures Fund

   Sep 2019 — Present

   Congress Avenue Ventures is part of Alumni Ventures and focuses on the University of Texas community and provides high net worth individuals with access to annual venture funds with 25 portfolio companies, diversified across sectors, venture stages and geographies. We do this by following top-tier funds as they invest across the country in opportunities that have UT alums as part of the management team. We follow firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer, Lightspeed, Menlo Ventures, Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Shasta, and Sequoia.While Congress Avenue Ventures is currently fund raising and is just starting to invest, our sibling funds have recently invested in companies with founders that are UT alums including:• data.world• Oura• TerraDepth• Capella SpaceFor me this is a great opportunity to combine my knowledge of UT based companies that I’ve been educating and mentoring over the last decade, along with my previous experience running several institutional funds for Austin Ventures. I’m really excited about the opportunity and innovation around bringing venture class returns to individual investors.

Education

• Capella University

  PhD, Management

  2004 — 2007

• Babson F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business

  MBA, Business and Entrepreneurship

  1987 — 1989

• Purdue University

  BS, Industrial Engineering

  1977 — 1981

Skills

• Performance Improvement
• Venture Capital
• Finance
• Product Management
• Executive Education
• Business Strategy
• Start-Ups
• Mergers & Acquisitions
• Strategic Partnerships
• Entrepreneurship
• Strategy
• Project Management
• Product Development
• Enterprise Software
• Marketing
• Financial Modeling
• Management
• Product Marketing
• Marketing Strategy
• Public Speaking
• Strategic Planning
• Business Development
• Business Networking
• Market Analysis
• Program Management
• Public Relations
• Sales
• Consulting
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Go-to-Market Strategy
• Change Management
• Saas
• Process Improvement
• Executive Management
• Market Research
• Business Process Improvement
• Leadership
• Business Analysis
• Analysis
• New Business Development