Titans of Finance – Greycroft Partners Founder, Alan Patricof

Alan Patricof is a founding father of venture capital, co-founder of Greycroft Partners and an early investor in Apple, AOL and Audible. Alan had super timely advice on how to make decisions right now on slowing the burn rate, i.e. “keeping the corpus alive,” closing your rounds now, even if it means taking a discount – “certainly is worth the discount, talking openly and honestly with your LPs…and much more. As it relates to the dip in the public equities market, Alan said he got advice long ago that "if you love a stock, you love it twice as much when it goes down 50%.”  

Alan Patricof (@alanjpatricof) is the founder and managing director of Greycroft.  A longtime innovator and advocate for venture capital, Alan entered the industry in its formative days with the creation of Patricof & Co. Ventures Inc., a predecessor to Apax Partners – today, one of the world’s leading private equity firms with $41 billion under management. In 2006, he founded Greycroft Partners, a venture capital firm, to invest in leading early and expansion stage investments in digital media.  With offices in New York and Los Angeles, Greycroft is currently investing from its fifth Fund as well as its second Growth Fund and has $1B+ under management.

With a 40-plus year career in venture capital, Alan has been instrumental in growing the venture capital field from a base of high net-worth individuals to its position today with broad institutional backing, as well as playing a key role in the essential legislative initiatives that have guided its evolution. He has helped build and foster the growth of numerous major global companies, including America Online, Office Depot, Cadence Systems, Cellular Communications, Inc., Apple Computer, FORE Systems, NTL, IntraLinks, and Audible. He was also a founder and chairman of the board of New York magazine, which later acquired the Village Voice and New West magazine.

Alan is active in the New York and Washington communities.  He is currently a board member of the Finance Committee of Northside Center for Child Development in Harlem and the Board of Overseers of Columbia School of Business.  He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Alan holds a BS in Finance from Ohio State University and an MS from Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He is married to his wife Susan for 48 years and has three children and seven grandchildren.

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