After Sean O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s first startup went public in 1994, he founded SOSV in 1995 as a \u201csuper angel.\u201d In 2007, based off the success of two dozen investments that had done remarkably well, Sean began expanding SOSV and transitioning it from a personal investment vehicle into an organization which today has over 80 staff supporting investments into 70 startups at inception (their first investment) every year, as well as follow-on investments in another 200+ deep-tech SOSV startups that went through IndieBio or HAX. In 2025, SOSV has 10 general partners operating globally with major offices in San Francisco, New York, Newark, Cork, Pune, and Singapore. The company also has staff in over 7 US states; Shenzhen, CN; London, UK; and Portugal.<\/p>\n
Sean got his entrepreneurial start in 1985 as a founder of MapInfo, inventing street mapping technology for personal computers. MapInfo went on to become a $200 million revenue public company with over 1,000 employees worldwide. In 1996, while at the helm of his second company, NetCentric, he created \u201csoftware for inside the Internet\u201d and is credited with co-creating the term \u201ccloud computing\u201d alongside George Favaloro from Compaq.<\/p>\n
Sean continued as an entrepreneur and investor, creating and supporting a range of business, humanitarian, and educational endeavors. He is an active inventor, and has been granted 30 patents in fields which subsequently developed into marketplaces with hundreds of billions (USD) in revenue. A major promoter of economic and social development, he founded JumpStart International<\/a> in 2003. JumpStart was a leading humanitarian engineering organization based in Baghdad and which operated throughout Iraq during the post-war period of 2003-2006. He spent a few years running JumpStart, which for a time had a staff of more than 3,000, running up to 80 projects at a time in Baghdad, Fallujah, and Najaf. As benefactor of the O\u2019Sullivan Foundation<\/a>, Sean has also been a primary funder of organizations such as the Khan Academy<\/a>, I-ASC<\/a>, and CoderDojo<\/a>.<\/p>\n As the founding Chairman of the Irish Entrepreneurship Forum and founder of Open Ireland, he was a leader and influencer of Irish government policy in fueling economic growth and recovery in the technology sector. Sean was a regular investment panelist on the popular RT\u00c9 TV show Dragon\u2019s Den, and an occasional columnist for Ireland\u2019s Sunday Business Post.<\/p>\n Sean holds a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute<\/a> and a Masters of Fine Arts in Film Production from the University of Southern California<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After Sean O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s first startup went public in 1994, he founded SOSV in 1995 as a \u201csuper angel.\u201d In 2007, based off the success of two dozen investments that had done remarkably well, Sean began expanding SOSV and transitioning it from a personal investment vehicle into an organization which today has over 80 staff supporting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12926,"template":"","tx_office":[2002],"member_type":[2003],"class_list":["post-5707","team","type-team","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tx_office-princeton","member_type-general-partner"],"acf":{"last_name":"O'Sullivan","position":"Managing General Partner, SOSV","profile_url":"https:\/\/res.cloudinary.com\/hlsr7ls49\/image\/upload\/v1633524366\/npibqd7bi4bpwvn6w7cc.jpg","profile_image":12924,"linkedin":"","twitter":"https:\/\/twitter.com\/sean_os1","facebook":"https:\/\/facebook.com\/sosventures","angelco":"https:\/\/angel.co\/sosv","quora":"https:\/\/www.quora.com\/profile\/Sean-OSullivan-2","portal_id":2214},"yoast_head":"\n