Texas State University-San Marcos

STUDIES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Mr. Rob Adams

April 20, 2004

Rob Adams is a Partner with Austin Ventures, and the Managing Director of AV Labs, a firm he started in August 1999. His focus is on enterprise software and new company formation. Through his career and involvement with AV Labs and Austin Ventures he has been a founding investor in more than 30 companies, including Waveset (sold to Sun, NASDAQ: SUNW), Newgistics, Permeo and Troux.

Adams was the founder of AV Labs, a successful early stage technology accelerator allied with Austin Ventures, starting the fund after being a partner with TL Ventures. Before entering the venture business, he was a technology executive for 18 years. He started his career with Lotus (NYSE: IBM), joining the company shortly after its public offering. Adams was instrumental in the development and launch of both 1-2-3 for Macintosh and Lotus Notes. He went on to be founder and CEO of Business Matters, a venture backed developer of financial modeling products and was an executive with Pervasive Software (NASDAQ: PVSW), a company he helped take public in 1997.

Adams holds a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from Purdue University and a Masters of Business Administration from Babson College. He was a top ranked adjunct professor on the entrepreneurship faculty at the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business and has taught at the MBA programs of Babson, University of Texas, St. Edwards, and Instituto Tecnologico de Monterrey. He is a nationally recognized expert and speaker on company formation and technology company issues, and has been covered in 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. He is also the author of A Good, Hard Kick in the Ass: Basic Training for Entrepreneurs (Random House/Crown, 2002).