Jeffrey (Jeff) Cooper is the Executive Director of the Richard Petritz Foundation, a private foundation of Colorado Springs. He is also a Principal of New Venture Resources, LLC, (“NVR”) , an investment and venture management firm with a 40 year track record in venture capital investing and entrepreneurship, primarily in technology-based businesses. In aggregate, NVR’s portfolio of venture-backed companies has created thousands of jobs, has been valued in excess of $600,000,000 in market capitalization and has collectively raised more than $150,000,000 in follow-on investments.
NVR’s portfolio includes early-stage investments in some of Colorado Springs and Silicon Valley’s leading technology companies including Mostek, Inmos, Simtek, Quova and a host of others. In addition, Jeff is a founding board member of Jibu, L3C, an award-winning Social Enterprise with more than $7 million in capitalization, headquartered in Colorado Springs and with operations in East Africa. As an executive and venture capital investor, Jeff’s been in the business of evaluating and shaping funding opportunities for risky new business projects for 28 years.
Jeff has decades of experience in building Colorado’s entrepreneurship ecosystem, as both a social entrepreneur and venture investor, in multiple collaborations with non-profit corporations and senior faculty from the University of Colorado, in Colorado Springs. He was a co-founder of the Colorado Capital Alliance, Inc. (“CCA”) (1994), featured in the Wall Street Journal and Entrepreneur Magazine. As a pioneer in statewide Angel Networks, CCA was the winner of the Denver Business Journal’s “Most Innovative New Service in Colorado Award” (1997), and a recipient of the US SBA’s “Model of Excellence Award in Venture Capital” (1999). Jeff is co-author of “Business Angels: A Guide to Private Investing”, an original book published by CCA (1998) and distributed by the Kauffman Foundation and the Edward Lowe Foundation. CCA’s intellectual property was acquired by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (2003), and was foundational to the Kauffman Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership’s national Angel Education series.
Jeff was a co-founder and fiduciary director of the Colorado Springs Technology Incubator, launched in 2000. He was also a co-founder and selection committee Chair of the High Altitude Investors Angel organization of Colorado Springs, now allied with The Rockies Venture Club of Denver. He has served as a grant reviewer for the Colorado Advanced Industries Accelerator Program, and on multiple occasions as an Innovation and Business Plan Judge for the University of Colorado, the National Homeland Security Innovation Competition (hosted by HDARPA), and the Chamber of Commerce.
Jeff and CCA were honored in 2001 by the University of Colorado and the Colorado Institute for Technology Transfer and Implementation as a “CITTI Success Story”. Jeff was the recipient of the “Outstanding Entrepreneurial Contributor Award” at the 2014 Celebrate Technology Awards Banquet, an annual collaboration between the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs Business Journal, and the Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance.
Jeff holds BA and MBA degrees from the University of Colorado.