Artifact Details

Title

Barris, Peter oral history

Catalog Number

102738552

Type

Text

Date

2017-09-24

Contributor

Barris, Peter, Interviewee

Hancock, Marguerite Gong, Interviewer

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

Chevy Chase, MD

Extent

38 p.

Format

PDF

Description

Peter Barris grew up in Chicago in a close-knit family of Greek Heritage. He attended Northwestern University, where he majored in Electrical Engineering. But his real interest was business, so he took an MBA at the Tuck School at Dartmouth. He was able to get an internship at General Electric between the first and second years of his MBA program.

Barris ended up working for GE for several years after graduation. When asked to move to take a promotion, he decided to leave GE instead and join an early mentor, Greg Lima at a IT company, UCCEL. After a significant restructuring of their business, Barris was put in charge of UCCEL’s systems software business. After that business was sold, he moved onto another systems software company in Washington DC.

He later had the itch to start his own company and a nearby VC firm, New Enterprise Associates, made him an offer to pay him while he got the company off the ground. After spending time at NEA for a time, he decided his future was in venture capital rather than direct business management. He joined NEA in 1992 and served as its Managing General Partner from 1999 – 2017. During his tenure, NEA’s assets under management grew from $1B to $20B.

Subject

General Electric; NEA (National Endowment for the Arts); Welch, Jack; Liebant, Greg; UCCEL; National Venture Capital Association (NVCA); Groupon

Collection Title

CHM Oral History Collection

Credit