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SOSV managing general partner Sean O’Sullivan joins Jim Barrood to trace his path from MapInfo pioneer to global deep-tech investor. He explains SOSV’s studio model (HAX, IndieBio), Newark and Princeton plasma initiatives, and billion-plus AUM. Despite chaotic markets, he urges founders to prove revenue, persist for years, and communicate transparently, openly.
Sean O'Sullivan: I'm the managing general partner at SOSV. We are a global venture capital firm that invests deeply into the deep tech areas the biology, physics, chemistry and we are the world's most active investor in those areas, including robotics and climate tech. We have operations in New York, San Francisco, Europe, and Asia.
Great.
Jim Barrood: And how many companies have you invested in?
Sean O'Sullivan: We've invested in probably 1200, 1300 companies. We have 800 in our active portfolio. We obviously aim to sell companies over time and some of them fail as well. So we have had several IPOs and several unicorns, 12 or so unicorns that we've backed.
Jim Barrood: Okay. Let's circle back to that, Sean, because you were obviously one of the. Most active investors on the planet. But first, let's get into your fantastic and fascinating journey. Let's start with college and take it from there. Okay.
Sean O'Sullivan: I went to college. I was 16 when I graduated high school.
And so went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I had to pay my own way through college. So I took some time off for co-ops nine monthsin IBM in North Carolina, in Boca Raton, working on Microcomputers like the. And operating systems as well as communications products, et cetera.
And I came up with an idea before I graduated college and I took a course in entrepreneurship. We developed a business plan and got that funded just as I was graduating college, not a lot of funding, $75,000 from. Family and friends and some business acquaintances.
And then we built a multimillion dollar multinational public company called MapInfo, where we had created the world's. We started with the United States and just the cities. Then the rural areas created all the street maps for the United States. All the address maps, so you could type an address into a computer and see a street map.
That's what everybody does these days, when they step into their car or when they, even when they're calling an Uber or anything like that. Those types of, things, and we did that originally for the US and then throughout the world. We were the world's leading company and created this thing called street mapping.
And that that took off, became a public company, hundreds of millions in revenues. And we went from there. So I, that was my first company.
Jim Barrood: So did you eventually sell that then?
Sean O'Sullivan: No, it went public. And I stayed on up until the time that it went public.
And then I went and it was seven, eight years in at that point. And we're talking the early nineties now before the internet actually. That company kept growing and whatnot. But I stayed as a shareholder, but I went on and became a musician. I became a filmmaker, and then I started more tech companies.
After that I did a lot of other things along the way, worked in war zones, et cetera. But the main thing that I did throughout the time after my first company went public was I started investing in some of my friends and people who I thought were just doing.
Really significant work. So that's a little bit about how SOSV got started. It was me and the checkbook or originally, and now it's grown to about a hundred plus people globally. Mostly through our indie bio and hacks arms, and that is what we invest in deep tech of all types hardware and chemistry and all of that, those types of things.
Jim Barrood: Awesome. Sean. But let's, I know you, you mentioned your. Detour into journalism and impacting nonprofits. I see you as a Renaissance man, so I really would like you to just give us a little more color on those interests and those activities that you did in between.
Sean O'Sullivan: Okay.
In terms of the music, it was not that tremendously successful, but we did have, I think we were on a hundred and, I don’t know, top 40 on 80 or 90 radio stations. We had a couple of albums. It was like a two-year period in, in, in my life. And it was fun, that's not, that doesn't add up to that much.
When you're in the United States, there's 2,800 radio stations. So we were number one for a weekend in New Hampshire at some alternative with our, with a. A hit as it were. But that was that, that was that those days ended quickly. And then from there I went into I guess what was it right after that?
Oh, yeah, I started another computer company. We coined it. The term cloud computing. The company grew to about 10 million in revenue and invented some concepts in computing that are still, I guess everybody knows what the term cloud computing is these days, more or less.
And we and then after that I did some filmmaking work and. Then I created an NGO. It was in 2001 after the World Trade Center on 9 -11 that I got interested in. Trying to help the world figure itself out. And I started as a peace keeping activist in Iraq, and then started the world's largest, Iraq's largest humanitarian organization after that war happened.
And I built you, there was a team of about 3,500 people that we ran as the largest NGO. In Iraq for several years. And that was not a pretty time as you could imagine. And then after that, I got married, had kids, and, started investing again.
Jim Barrood: Got it.
And the journalism piece was part of the filmmaking or what was that?
Sean O'Sullivan: The journalism piece was, just for about, I worked as a correspondent as really just as a film, as a video person for news organizations. And, for CNN and Reuters and a B, C. A, b, c, a lot of Philippines tv, channel five in France.
A lot of folks ran the footage that I captured for them. But they would then do their voiceover on top of that footage, and I would work with their reporters a bit to do that.
Jim Barrood: That is fascinating. Okay, let's circle back to SOSV. So you start SOSV and. I know that it's one of the biggest accelerators on the planet, but can talk to us about how that came into being and how that's grown and, yeah.
The market's changed
Sean O'Sullivan: over
Jim Barrood: the past
Sean O'Sullivan: many years, so yeah. So we did start as accelerators and so everyone pro, not everyone, but a lot of people know what accelerators are. Where you have, somebody generally who's founded multinational businesses. That advises startups on how to build a company.
And generally that's like business plan help and introductions to investors and that type of thing. And then we became one of the world's largest four. We're still that same size, but we gave up the accelerator business and became more of a studio which we are now.
And the difference between that is just there's a lot more intensive help that we give than. You would in just developing a business plan or doing pitch practice and demo days. We run f. Labs, wet labs and facilities to help the startups. And we have a large concentration of about 70 very technical people, PhDs in various topics from molecular biology to chemistry, to industrial design to, electrical engineering, et cetera, and all of those.
All of those things are key to how we contribute value. Plus we've spent tens of millions of dollars building out wet labs and facilities, et cetera. That's not something accelerators do, but that it is something that SOSV does with our more intensive sort of approach. It's still similarly, we don't own a majority of a company or anything like that.
It's still a very minor percentage of the company, but we offer that additional value to startups in order to work with them and introduce them to the right types of investors. In the areas where we're the. World's most active,
Jim Barrood: and you were based, you had locations around the world.
Explain where you were and where you are today if that's changed.
Sean O'Sullivan: We have operations in Asia, Europe and the US. In terms of where we are today, we have these programs, these startup development programs, these studios that are in. Los Angeles or in San Francisco and in Newark and in and in Manhattan at Seven Pen Plaza.
And there are biology labs and physical labs. We also have resources for the benefit of our startups in places like Shenzhen, China, in Pune, India throughout Asia for helping our teams with funding, sourcing engineering support, et cetera. Manufacturing supports all those areas.
Jim Barrood: And you've raised several funds? How much is total?
Sean O'Sullivan: Yeah, we have about a billion and a half in assets under management. It's not that much when you consider, I guess it puts us in the top 50 or so. It was Time magazine or something like that recently said we're the 40th best VC in the world.
Speaker 3: I think we're actually much better than that. That, but they're counting on things like how much capital you have under management. There's a lot that have a lot more money than we do. And,
Sean O'Sullivan: We. We are really the supply chain for later stage VCs. There's a lot of VCs that will invest at the Series B and series C levels, and they manage a lot of money.
We are relatively small. We deploy about a hundred million dollars a year into new startups and into our existing startups. For every. A hundred million dollars we deploy. There's about $2 billion that comes into our companies, the ones that went through our programs where we're the first investor in those companies.
$2 billion a year or so for those companies that go get into our programs comes from the rest of the VC industry.
Jim Barrood: That's awesome. And what about some of the success stories, some of those companies which have gone on to go public?
What are some of the ones? I know there's so many. Yeah. Just give us a few examples of companies that. We may have heard
Sean O'Sullivan: of. It's funny because a lot of the stuff that we do is in deeply technical areas. There's probably only a few consumer sort of companies that you may have heard of. And so I'll, I guess I'll start with one that actually is.
One of the first ones that sort of hit it big and billions of dollars in revenue. It was a company called harmonics and they invented the game called Guitar Hero and rock Band. It's a game that was the world's most popular game back in the 2007 to 2010 period.
Billion dollars a year in revenue kind of thing. And that, that's one you may have heard of. And then there are other brands that are on this store shelves throughout the world. And a lot of that is on the ingredient side. So you may not know about who makes the ingredients for these products like solvents and things that are used for.
Cosmetics or the industry for shampoos and other types of products, but these are more industrial style products. But there's a company called One Skin that Jennifer Aniston was just raving about last week which is a renew renewable longevity-based skin product that basically keeps your skin regenerating.
And that is a little bit famous on the cosmetic side. And then there's a lot of companies that do things like creating the world's first animal meat, but without doing it without animals. There's a company called Perfect Day that makes milk without cows.
There's a company called Memphis Meats. It's now called Upside Foods That makes the world's first animal meat, but not using any animals to do it. But it's the exact same as animal meat. These are some of the companies that people may know of.
There's so many every there's not co, which. Which is, a hundred million in revenue for and there's other companies that, that, that are in the crypto space and things like that, that are worth billions of dollars. So there's a couple, but there are a wide variety of companies, not so many people that the general public would know the names of.
Jim Barrood: Got it. What about some of the new initiatives you're working on? I know you've done some collaborations in the state. Some which were just announced, some which have been in a place for a few years. Tell us about those. Those collaborations and those efforts?
Sean O'Sullivan: Yeah we are Jet we took our program, which had been creating hardware, devices and robotics and whatnot that had been in Shenzhen, China. This was back in the 2000 and eight period when I first, it got heavily involved in China to the 2018 period before things started to get really weird with the geopolitics and what was going on internally in China.
And then then we, since then we, we moved the headquarters of that program, the hacks program to Newark, New Jersey after doing a big search in New York or throughout the throughout the US as to where the best location would be. And we decided on, on, on that location. And that is where that program is based right now.
It has other people and other support from. People around the world. But Newark is our headquarters for hacks in New Jersey right next to Penn Station in downtown. And we have about a 45,000 square foot facility there that has about 200 or so people working in it at any time from about 30 different new startups that we're helping to get off the ground.
And that and the other thing that is just starting is the state has. Announced is our HAX plasma program, which is working with the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to help on creating deep tech companies in the area of plasma. Obviously, everybody thinks of that.
In terms of fusion creating energy. And we do as well, we've backed several companies in that space, in fusion in the supply chain for fusion. Things like magnets and devices to improve plasma generation, et cetera. But also recently a fusion company that came out of the University of Maryland that has a new fusion reactor that has been proven at a small scale.
And now we need to make it available at very large scales. So those are some of the ambitious areas that we are tackling here in New Jersey.
Jim Barrood: That's really exciting, especially the one you just announced, right? Energy is going to be so critical going forward, especially to support all the AI.
Sean O'Sullivan: Yeah, and so we have a lot of entrants in that space. New types of battery technologies, new types of energy storage facilities that don't use batteries like kinetic energy and gravity energy. All sorts of other geothermal all sorts of other efforts to create a decarbonized world
Jim Barrood: That's exciting.
And mention indie bio. That's just across the river indie
Sean O'Sullivan: bio just across the river in New York. So that's where we create new therapeutics companies, new biology companies that are create either. Either approved drugs, small molecule therapeutics, antibody therapeutics all those types of biologics that are approved by the FDA or medical devices.
HS does that as well. And, those companies work. We work together between our indie bio and hacks arm to, to create medical solutions. And that is the world's most active. Through that we are the world's most active investor in biology. Having backed many hundreds of companies in that space for fighting cancer and for fighting Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, all autism, all sorts of areas.
Jim Barrood: That's awesome. And when we first met, when you first came to Princeton, I don't know how many years ago now it is,
Sean O'Sullivan: 10. Yeah.
Jim Barrood: I remember saying please open things here. And, it's really those wishes that have been realized. So I really am so thankful for the ecosystem here, community here at the state, the region is so thankful for your leadership.
Sean O'Sullivan: I have to say that the, this, the. The New York state, New York City and Newark and the state of New Jersey have done a spectacular job in working with us and recognizing that we're here. We were helping them throughout the process and we introduced.
Brooklyn's first unicorn was actually one of our companies. Oh that's a company called Jump Bikes. Actually, that was that, that's a pretty cool company. And that, oh, actually, no, that wasn't the first unicorn. That was that we, the first unicorn was a company called Open Trons, actually in Brooklyn.
And so anyway, so we had led the way with manufacturing and robotics companies, et cetera. The state and the city were really saying, Hey, we need way more of this. So they worked very actively with us to be proactive partner in helping us establish facilities here.
And that's been great. And also to help on the financing side with providing for startups additional venture capital funds from state funds, et cetera. Guaranteed from the, from the areas that, that they do in those areas, they have some funds of the.
I don't know if it comes from the state pension, but it comes from some programs where they put money into venture capital and that's been great as well. And they've, they're in the process of doing extremely well by that. There's a lot of jobs, a lot of new startups that are making New Jersey their home, for example, here.
That's great. And also in New York.
Jim Barrood: That is really a fantastic story. Now what about the current trends, current outlook these days, obviously.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's terrible out there.
Jim Barrood: I was expecting just a little hope. Come on.
Sean O'Sullivan: Oh, no, I'm afraid that we are in a world of chaos, my friend.
It is not a good time to be a VC. It's a challenging environment. We have this chaos. What do I mean by chaos? In the physical world we have all these tariffs and all of these things which are creating real market turmoil and creating.
Enemies out of people that used to be friends like countries like Canada. I never knew that we would actually make Canada an enemy. And I'm telling you, I'll give you an example of something very concrete. We declared war on Canada earlier this year. And they said, oh, if you're going to start, killing our 10 hundreds of thousands of jobs, et cetera, in the car industry or whatever.
We're going to stop investing in you guys, and so they made good on their promise. And some of their pensions funds are no longer investing in us venture capital firms. Now, we're, we don't have any pension money from Canada, but loads of people do. And one of the rounds that we put together for a great American, fantastic biotech company in San Francisco. In Berkeley actually. But it's a revolutionary company. It is going to, is producing, drugs for dozens of startup or for the big big pharma companies, but it's also a startup. It needs venture capital and it was getting venture capital.
That was led in a round that was led by a US VC firm whose largest investor was Canada was a Canadian pension fund. And so as soon as that, earlier this year when this company was doing a crucial funding round, suddenly that VC that was leading that round was said, oh, we don't have the money anymore.
We can't back your company. And this was two weeks before the funding was supposed to happen because all this was happening fast. All this chaos is happening all over the place really fast. And then suddenly we had to scramble. Instead of getting an upround and having all the money for this company, we had to scramble to keep the company alive and to not have to do massive layoffs.
And it was just a month of my life that I wish I had back. And this is happening all over the place. And it's not just Canada that we're pissing off. We're pissing off a bunch of other people I thought of as allies, Europe and other countries around the world, that are just, saying, what the hell's going on here?
So anyway, that's causing a lot of problems for global businesses and not a lot of people don't. A lot of people realize there's a lot of other problems, the corruption, all the, and all the signals that's sending about America and its values. But that and maybe that's the worst thing from the long-term point of view, all those other things.
But I'm telling you logistically the reason why the VC industry is doing so poorly right now is a lot to do with this. Just constant chaos. And suddenly you're, you're getting all these retaliatory tariffs and things like this that are happening as a result of what the US is doing.
It's a very unstable environment. This is not the way to run it. A country. So at any rate, I'm not happy about that. And even before that the last couple of years have been coming off the 2021 high of the industry where we, the industry doubled in that year, right after, right during the middle of COVID and so the prices are off and then of course there was the.
Ukraine, Russia War, which caused the big spike in gold in, in, in prices for everyone and lack of certainty, et cetera of that. Is there any hope with the, that
Jim Barrood: the m and a, all the additional m and a activity and IPOs, is that giving some.
Sean O'Sullivan: Yeah so this year there's been a little bit more action in the IPO market.
That would, that, that I would say that, with chaos though so maybe I, but it's not. It's not looking good right now, just because again, chaos makes people put their money in their pockets. They don't want to be investing in the long term when they don't know what's going on in the short term.
And especially with regard to all this. Now, this may also in the past I would say in Trump, in the first Trump presidency, we were left alone, the, the financial markets were left alone and did fine. And so at some point they, all of this meddling, may stop as a recession comes on and things like that.
And they may stop trying to be as ambitious about destroying the American economy as it looks like they're trying to do but. It may happen. We have a lot of things that are in common. We, with any administration, with Republican and or obviously we're trying to create business in the US and that or democratic that everybody wants to be doing that and us supporting that.
And creating manufacturing jobs and everything else and energy, sustainability and independence manufacturing capabilities, et cetera. So we're extremely active in those areas, so there's really no reason for us not to be wanting to support goals with any administration.
So we'd be happy if that, that, if we could progress more rationally. But at this, at the moment you have a very. Anti-business. And I would say the Democratic under Biden, they were a little bit too tough against some of the big tech companies that were a little too tough against, which is actually one of the people that.
Help support and take out these startups, they invest in these startups and they buy these startups. It is one of the exit strategies for VCs. 80% of the market is acquisitions. It's not IPOs. If not more, and in this environment it's more it's a tough market.
It's tough for startups at all stages. It's not just the later stages. We invest primarily in the earlier stages. All of the. All the chaos with the funding for research for universities and for the pullback in NIH funding and all the scientific areas, SBIR programs and anything to do with climate.
As I said, we're the world's most active climate tech investor. All of those things are really bad for. Innovation in the United States. However, like all of these companies are global companies to begin with, and even if they're based here in the United States for the most part they do sell to a global market.
And the need for these products is. Immense. We are finding the bright side of all of this is that the corporates globally really need these products, really need to make data centers more effective, really need to reduce cost of energy, really need to come up with sustainable energy solutions.
And to decarbonize their product stream. The demand for the products is great. The revenues are going up hugely in a bunch of these companies. So when a rational market led by rational policies emerges, I think our startups are going to do fine.
Jim Barrood: Fair enough.
So you mentioned startups. What about entrepreneurs? We usually do just one thing. What tip do you have for entrepreneurs who are looking to raise money?
Sean O'Sullivan: I'd say the for people that are looking to raise money, there's one thing that will take there's one thing that enables venture capitalists to put their hands in their pockets and take money out. And that's the, when you get to revenues and you show that you have proof points. Everybody thinks VCs are going to back unproven people in unproven markets with unproven products. That's not what VCs do. They like to see people create something from nothing.
And you have to actually prove that people want to buy what you're making. At that point when you've got customers that like your product are happy with your product and are repeat customers, VCs want to take their hands out of their pockets and give you the money. Got so get there, get to revenues.
Jim Barrood: What about, I know you said the market's terrible, but there are a lot of people that are still looking to get into angel investing, VC or investing in general. Any tips for those people?
Sean O'Sullivan: There are lots of, for people that want to do angel investing it's, there are a lot of places to go to find these startups.
There are accelerators, there are programs like we have at Indie Bio and Hacks and we have lots of activities that are open to the public, to qualifying investors, et cetera. And accredited investors. So that is the opportunities are unlimited. Their possibilities are continuing to be really exciting in so many areas.
And I'd say just get plugged into the deal flow that you're seeing from leading accelerators and programs like SOSV’s indie Bio and HAX.
Jim Barrood: Excellent. Okay. Right now we have a few lightning questions.
Most underrated founder quality or trait?
Sean O'Sullivan: It's just the ability to go up against walls for 10 years at a time is persistence.
It's just getting to yes no matter what the challenges are.
Jim Barrood: Okay. What about one investor that you didn't invest in that you regret the most?
Sean O'Sullivan: I don't have any regrets, but I will say there was a company that we backed when they were a hardware company called Leap Motion.
It was a really unique and great company. Got to 70 million in revenues. There's the founder there, David Holtz. We backed that company. But then he started his second company as an area that we. Don't concentrate in the software space, and it's called Midjourney. I don't know if you've heard of Midjourney, but it, that's a great new company for creating videos and pick photos and whatnot with ai, generative ai, and it's done phenomenally well,
Jim Barrood: for sure.
Okay. How do you actually unplug?
Sean O'Sullivan: Exercise…go out for long walks, go to the gym.
Jim Barrood: That's great. And one general piece of advice worth sharing.
Sean O'Sullivan: Don't point fingers. Take responsibility for your actions and be proactive and transparent with your investors.
Jim Barrood: Awesome. Lastly, we conclude with a poem or a saying, or a quote. What would you like to share with us?
Sean O'Sullivan: I have to refer to this oldie, but goodie. It's from Teddy Roosevelt. It's the Man in the Arena, I think it's called, or something like that. And I'll read it here. Yeah. So it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how str, how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to a man who's actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat. Blood who strives valiantly, who heirs, but who comes up short again and again? Because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows? Great enthusiasms, the great devotions who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end, the triumph of high achievement.
And who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
Jim Barrood: I love that. That's a great way to end. Thank you so much, Sean. Thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your friendship.
