About
I am an Assistant Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship at the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. Teaching responsibilities include an undergraduate course in venture capital and the MBA course on venture capital and private equity. I received by PhD in economics from the University of California, San Diego in 2010. Since 2006 I have worked as a quantitative analyst and currently a quantitative advisor for Correlation Ventures, a venture capital firm based in San Diego.
Research
My research sits at the intersection of venture capital and areas in both finance and entrepreneurship. The interaction of venture capitalist and entrepreneur provides an economics environment where frictions such as agency or information asymmetries are at extremes. One vein of research looks at major corporate finance topics through the lens of the entrepreneurial firm. I study the leverage decisions of entrepreneurial firms, private firms as they transition to public firms and the differences between corporate investment activity in corporate venture capital. Another research area investigates entry into entrepreneurship and the role of financial intermediaries in the innovate activity of inventors. A goal of each research project is to answer questions with a rich panel data and unique identification strategies to alleviate many of the selection and endogeneity issues that pervade the VC literature. For example, my projects merge inventor patents with entrepreneurial management teams, track a venture capital partner’s investment history and detail the leverage choices of firms from as they transition from private to public.