Thorne Sparkman: Office Hours

As managing director of the Slater Technology Fund, Thorne focuses on the earliest stage of company creation, often working with university-based teams commercializing research. He serves as board member for Voltserver, Datarista, Advanced Image Enhancement, and Tizra Software, and as a board observer at Squadlocker, Drive Time Metrics, eNow, Aquanis, Location, Inc., and RxVantage. He was previously involved with VCharge (acquired by Ovo Energy, Ltd) Mofuse (acquired by The Search Agency), Andera (acquired by Bottomline Technologies, NSDQ: epay), MTI Film and MTI Machine vision (acquired by DVT Corporation, NSDQ: CGNX), GeneSpectrum (acquired by NABsys), Swyx, Tazz Networks, and ModEnergy (acquired by Enersys NSDQ: ENS) among others.

Thorne is a member of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Advisory Board and the Investor Steering Committee at the New England Clean Energy Council (NECEC). He enjoys working with young entrepreneurs as a guest lecturer at Brown University and URI, a judge at business plan competitions such as MassChallenge, and a mentor at B-Lab, a program in entrepreneurial innovation at Brown University. He is a frequent panelist at national and local conferences, and his articles on entrepreneurship have appeared in publications including The Providence Journal, Mass High Tech, and American Venture. Thorne holds a B.A. from Harvard and an M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

You can sign up for his office hours, here.