Eric Ball

General Partner, Impact Venture Capital
Eric Ball

Eric Ball is Co-Founder and General Partner at Impact Venture Capital, an early-stage applied-AI venture firm that emphasizes coinvestment with corporates. He also serves on several boards, including: board chair at the Archimedes Tech SPAC, cofounder and board chair of capital markets startup CapConnect+, and board roles at three of his venture firm’s portfolio companies.

Eric spent 28 years as a corporate finance executive, including 11 years as Senior Vice President & Treasurer at Oracle (where he issued $52 billion in bonds to pay for 105 acquisitions) and one year as CFO at C3 AI. He has also worked in finance at: AT&T, Avery Dennison, Cisco Systems, and Flextronics. He serves on the board of two other nonprofits: the Lucas Medical Foundation and the National Association for Urban Debate Leagues. Eric received a B.A. with Honors, from the University of Michigan, an MBA and M.A. from the University of Rochester (he completed coursework toward a PhD in Economics), and his PhD in Management from the Drucker-Ito School. He has taught at three universities (University of Rochester, Rutgers, and USC), and served as co-editor of the Journal of Applied Finance for five years. He is co-author of the 2012 book Unlocking the Ivory Tower: How Management Research Can Transform Your Business.

Eric’s wife, Sheryl Axline, works in executive education for Stanford GSB. They live in Menlo Park with two teenage sons.