Eric Thompson

Eric Thompson is a career finance and operations executive. He began his professional career at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in Baltimore, where he worked from roughly 2001 to 2007 as a Manager in the Assurance and Business Advisory Services practice. He is a CPA (reflected in his LinkedIn handle, "ericthompsoncpa") and earned both a BBA in Accounting and an MBA in Finance from Loyola University Maryland.

In 2007 he joined Greenspring Associates — a Maryland-based venture capital firm founded in 2000 as Montagu Newhall Associates and rebranded to Greenspring in 2010 — initially as Vice President of Finance. He was promoted to Chief Financial Officer in February 2008 and then to Chief Operating Officer in May 2014. As COO he ran all of the firm's finance and back-office operations rather than sourcing or leading investments. During his tenure the firm scaled to roughly $17 billion in assets under management, raising vehicles such as a $999 million ninth diversified venture fund (2019) and an $800 million fourth secondaries fund (2020).

In 2021, StepStone Group acquired Greenspring Associates in a transaction valued north of $725 million, combining the operations into a business managing roughly $27 billion in venture and growth assets. Following the acquisition (September 2021 onward), Eric Thompson became a Partner and Chief Operating Officer for StepStone's Private Equity business, based in New York.

Outside of work, Thompson served as a Board Member and Treasurer for Habitat for Humanity of Maryland from about 2007 to 2013, consistent with his finance-leadership background.

• Eric Thompson is an operating executive (COO/CFO background), not a thesis-driven investor; he does not publish a personal investment thesis.
• His firm — Greenspring Associates, now part of StepStone Group — pursued a distinctive "flywheel" strategy blending primary fund commitments, direct company investments/co-investments, and secondary positions.
• Firm sector focus: information technology and software, biotechnology, healthcare, and telecommunications.
• Firm stage: across the venture lifecycle, with meaningful weight toward growth and late-stage direct investments alongside its fund-of-funds book.
• Institutional scale: Greenspring managed ~$17B AUM at acquisition; StepStone's combined venture/growth platform manages ~$27B — an LP and growth-equity profile, far from seed-stage angel checks.