Stuart Ellman

Stuart Ellman is Co-Founder & Managing Partner of RRE Ventures. He has been immersed in information technology since the early 1980s when he taught himself computer programming and sold computer hardware and software. Since co-founding RRE in 1994, Stuart has been responsible for over forty technology investments, ranging from incubation-stage to post-revenue companies. He has invested in sectors across information technology, from security to green IT, from consumer-facing web companies to enterprise software. He believes that he is not a technologist but is a business person who utilizes technology to drive competitive advantage. He looks for big markets and superior management and has little interest in “me too” companies or following what is “hot” in the marketplace. He currently serves as a Board Director of Betaworks, Business Insider, Kroll Bond Ratings, Payfone, RecycleBank, SideTour and Tippr. Stuart began his career as a management consultant with McKinsey and Company in Australia. Later, he was a Financial Analyst at Dillon, Read & Co. where he focused on leveraged buyouts and restructurings and an Associate at Morgan Stanley & Co., specializing in fixed income capital markets. After graduating from business school in 1992, Stuart changed his life forever and became an entrepreneur. Stuart was the junior co-founder and Vice President at Advisory Capital Partners, a principal investment and advisory firm. Working nights and weekends, Stuart co-founded InterVideo Response with Jim in early 1994, which attempted to build in-stadium touchscreen ordering systems. They were ten years too early. After deciding against launching a second business plan involving pets and vets, the two decided to start their own investment firm late in 1994. In addition to his work as a venture investor, Stuart has served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia Business School since 2002, where he teaches a popular Venture Capital Seminar to MBA students. In 2011, he delivered the Keynote address at the Columbia Business School Private Equity and Venture Capital Conference. In 2009, he taught a graduate seminar at the CDTM in Munich, Germany, a joint program with Technical University and Ludwig Maximilians Universityb. He is the Treasurer/Chairman of the Finance Committee of the 92nd Street Y where he has been on the board since 2001. He is also on the board of The Browning School. Also, Stuart is a member of the New York City Investment Fund's Clean Tech Sector Group, the VC Advisory Group of the New York City Economic Development Corporation, the Economic Club of New York, and the NYC 2020 CEO Roundtable. He is also a TechStars mentor. Stuart holds an MBA with Distinction from Harvard University and a BA in Economics from Wesleyan University where he was a Gilbert Clee Scholar and a Horace White Fellow. Stuart resides in Manhattan with his wife of two decades, two kids and a spoiled black cat.