Eric Satz

Tennessee Community Ventures (TNCV) -- The principals here include Eric Satz, the founder of angel- and venture-backed Plumgood Food, the Nashville-based online grocer that is now shuttered after five years. Prior to Plumgood, Satz was in Internet investment banking and financial-restructuring roles, respectively, with DLJ and UBS. He earned his bachelor's in economics at Amherst College. Also in on the TCVF offering: William Hagerty, a co-founder of Hagerty Peterson & Co., earned his economics degree and law degrees at Vanderbilt University, and has participated in numerous technology ventures and investments. He served with Boston Consulting Group on an array of financial, healthcare and international transactions. He also served on The White House Council on Competitiveness and was involved in the Republican presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and John McCain. Also involved: William Guttman, Ph.D., is an investment partner with TL Ventures, a $1.5 billion venture capital company focused on tech-enabled companies, and operating from Silicon Valley and the Philadelphia area. He has served as a distinguished professor in economics and technology at Carnegie Mellon University, and served on a cybersecurity advisory committee for the National Academies of Science and Engineering. He earned his degrees at UCLA and Oxford University. Eduardo Rallo is a managing director of Pacific Community Ventures, in San Francisco. He earned an MBA from Harvard University in 1993 and a bachelor's in Economics from the University of California, San Diego. Earlier, among other ventures, he co-founded and led BrainStorm Ventures, which has invested in 24 seed- and early-stage ventures in e-commerce and software. Lastly, John Hopkins, Ph.D., is a vice president and tech-transfer director of the University of Tennessee Research Foundation (UTRF), which he represents on TCVF. He oversees tech commercialization activities flowing from UT Chattanooga, UT Knoxville, UT Institute of Agriculture, and the UT Space Institute. Before joining UTRF, he was an associate professor in Mechanical, Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering at the UT Space Institute. His career has included tech-driven business development, including research and intellectual property discovery, protection and licensing. He has also been involved in more than ten start-up companies, including roles as founder, inventor, licensor of intellectual property and business development. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from UT and an MBA from Vanderbilt University. He holds 11 patents. ♦

Return to Main TNInvestco announcements story.