Gregory Ho

Gregory P. Ho is a co-founder, President, and Chief Operating Officer of Spring Mountain Capital (SMC), a New York–based private investment management firm he launched in 2001 with John L. ("Launny") Steffens, the former Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch. SMC focuses on alternative asset investing and is organized into five investment groups — Growth Equity, Total Return, Private Capital, Social Impact, and Municipal Bonds — managing roughly $1.8 billion in assets. Ho also heads the firm's Social Impact Group.

Before founding SMC, Ho spent 16 years (1982–1998) at McKinsey & Company, where he rose to Principal and served as the firm's Chief Financial Officer. In that role he led financial and tax planning for McKinsey and its worldwide partner group and oversaw the identification, evaluation, and selection of traditional and alternative asset managers for more than $1 billion of assets in the firm's qualified employee plans and in-house investment office. He sat on McKinsey's Investment Committee and served as a Trustee of its retirement plan, and helped guide the firm's expansion into dozens of international markets. Earlier in his career he practiced law as an associate at Donovan Leisure Newton & Irvine. Between leaving McKinsey and founding SMC (1998–2001), he worked as a private investor and consultant to NYC financial-services companies and technology start-ups.

Ho holds a J.D. from Columbia Law School and a B.S. with honors in Administrative Science from Yale College, and is licensed to practice law in New York and California. He is active in mentorship and civic roles, advising Venture for America and Columbia Law School's Center for Public Research and Leadership. He often credits McKinsey mentor Marvin Bower's principle — "if you do the right thing, everything else will follow" — as a guiding tenet of his career.

• Invests in "the sectors of the U.S. economy undergoing the most change and with the highest growth potential" — enterprise software, technology-enabled services, digital health, and healthcare services — plus life sciences, cybersecurity, e-commerce, and impact investing.
• Practices a risk-managed style: in his words, geared toward "avoiding big mistakes versus trying to capture every great deal."
• Evaluates opportunities against five stated criteria: Team (ability to steward the business and handle adversity), Timing (investing in "big waves"), Impact (solutions to disproportionate outcomes in underserved communities), Product-Market Fit (evidence of validation/adoption), and Founder–Fund Fit (genuine alignment on mission and transparency).
• Through the Social Impact strategy, builds early-stage companies "from the ground up" that directly involve members of historically underrepresented minority populations in development, management, and ownership, targeting healthcare, education, and technology needs in overlooked geographies.
• Advises founders to "be introspective, humble, and endlessly curious. Never assume that you have figured it all out."