Ira is a founder of Hyde Park Venture Partners and a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he teaches entrepreneurship and tax strategy. Ira has been actively investing in private companies for the past 15 years and has made over 125 venture capital and angel investments. Prior to his role at Hyde Park Venture Partners, Ira was a managing director of RK Ventures, a NY based pledge fund. Ira’s primary investing interests are technology-enabled consumer and business services and healthcare IT.
Ira currently serves on various boards as a director or observer, including FourKites, Parkwhiz, and ShipBob. Previously, Ira was on the board of Concerro (sold to API Healthcare) and also a board member or an observer at Ahalogy, G2Crowd and Streamlink Software. His most notable prior investments include Rackspace, Avid Radiopharmaceuticals (sold to Eli Lilly), Edusoft (sold to Houghton Mifflin), and Axioma. Ira started his career as an accountant at Coopers and Lybrand, and received both his MBA and Ph.D. from the Booth School of Business.