Robert Creeden

Robert J. “Bob” Creeden is Managing Director of the UVA LVG Seed Fund & New Ventures at the University of Virginia Licensing & Ventures Group. In that role, he supports creation of ventures based on University technologies and leads day-to-day operations of two $10 million investment funds. UVA LVG says his remit includes identifying opportunities in LVG’s technology portfolio, recruiting executives and entrepreneurs-in-residence, and mentoring newly formed companies.

Before UVA, Creeden spent more than two decades as an early-stage venture capitalist in the Boston area and more than 30 years commercializing new technologies. He was Vice President of Massachusetts Technology Development Corporation, an early-stage firm funding technology-based companies in Massachusetts, and later General Partner at Egan-Managed Capital, a $150 million Boston-based venture fund.

In 2005, Creeden established and implemented the $35 million Partners Innovation Fund at Partners HealthCare. He later served as senior partner at Derby Management before joining UVA LVG in 2016 as managing director of the UVA Seed Fund. His education includes an MBA from Suffolk University and a B.A. in Economics from College of the Holy Cross.

Creeden also teaches venture diligence in the UVA ecosystem: UVA LVG lists him as leading “Due Diligence in Seed Fund Investing,” a course for second-year business students that uses real examples from the Seed Fund pipeline to assess prospective investments.

• Invests in new ventures emerging from the UVA research portfolio, especially companies commercializing UVA research ideas, discoveries, and intellectual property.
• Focuses on the seed-stage funding gap for university technologies that are too early for traditional capital, including “newcos” formed around technologies “right off the lab bench.”
• Uses an industry-style diligence process beginning with an online application and pitch deck; UVA LVG says the timeline can take up to nine months before an investment decision.
• Prefers opportunities with clear commercialization viability, a defined problem, market opportunity, product differentiation, competitive analysis, financial model, milestones, management/research team, and specific funding use.
• Typically syndicates with other investors in the relevant industry; UVA reported that the first six years of the fund attracted 18 syndicate partners and nearly $75 million in follow-on investment.
• Creeden’s stated goal for the second fund: “continue commercializing and accelerating UVA technologies for high impact in the market.”