Rob Adams is an Executive Director with Alumni Ventures, where he founded both Congress Avenue Ventures and Ring Ventures, venture funds focused on the University of Texas and Texas A&M communities.He has been active in the venture business for 30 years and previously he was on the faculty of The University of Texas at Austin where he taught entrepreneurship in the MBA program and was the Director of Texas Venture Labs. He’s a former software executive, entrepreneur and institutional fund manager. He has served on many corporate boards and has founded or financed more than 300 companies and raised significant amounts of capital in both public and private markets. Prior to his appointment at The University of Texas, he was in the venture capital industry, ultimately founding AV Labs, a fund affiliated with Austin Ventures. Prior to the venture business, he was a software operating executive for two decades. This career included positions in sales, marketing and general management. He was with Lotus (NYSE: IBM), joining the company shortly after its public offering. Adams was their first corporate sales representative and went on to be instrumental in the development and launch of both 1-2-3 for Macintosh and Lotus Notes. He founded and was CEO of Business Matters, a venture backed developer of financial modeling products that was acquired. He was an executive with Pervasive Software (NASDAQ: PVSW), a company he helped take public.Dr. Adams holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, where he received their Outstanding Engineer Award, a Masters of Business Administration from Babson College's Olin School of Management, and a Ph.D. in Management from Capella University. He is an internationally recognized speaker on innovation, commercialization and entrepreneurship. He has keynoted the Inc. 500 business conference, international venture conferences, and consults for numerous global 500 companies. His work has been covered in Business Week, 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.