Managing Directors

William Newman and Gordon Hoffman, the two managing directors of NTV, bring complementary and coordinating skills to the management of the firm. Bill Newman has been deeply involved in the start-up business community from the investor’s perspective, while Gordon Hoffman has spent his career as an entrepreneur. Both bring an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities in the research and academic environments. Of particular relevance to the mission of NTV, both Mr. Hoffman and Mr. Newman have long experience in:

William Newman

Leaving a career as university researcher to found a start-up, and from that position gaining 5 years of investment experience in a venture fund, Bill Newman brings a business perspective to the academic and research environment. Bill earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and applied mathematics prior to joining the research faculty at MIT, where he served for more than a decade as a principal investigator on NIH-funded research and directed a joint program at MIT and the Harvard Medical School to develop and evaluate technology for the treatment of cancer. His discoveries led to four patents, and he left MIT to found a medical instrumentation start-up based on this research. After earning an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, he entered the venture industry to focus on early-stage investments, ultimately launching NTV in 2002. He serves on numerous corporate boards within the NTV portfolio, and on various academic and civic boards including past chair of the Oregon Bioscience Association, and as founding member of Oregon’s Innovation Council, the state’s advisory board on knowledge and innovation based economic development.

Gordon Hoffman

In a complementary career path, Gordon Hoffman initiated a large corporate intrapreneurial venture and from there founded five start-ups, some with venture funding, and built them from inception through to growth and exit. Gordon has an MS in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He has been an early employee at seven startups, including five he founded - one of which as entrepreneur-in-residence at a venture fund. These five include two software venture-funded companies, an intrapreneurial semiconductor operation within a major corporation, an electronic components sales representative company, and a consulting firm. In the public policy realm, he served for four years by appointment as the governor’s commissioner for the Colorado Advanced Technology Initiative (CATI), a statewide entity charged with coordinating the strategic reorganization of the state’s major universities, creation of distinctive centers of excellence, and a personally-directed program to create a high-speed telecommunication infrastructure linking the state’s campuses. In the academic sector, he created and served as director of the Oregon Graduate Institute’s Office of Technology Commercialization. He has also served on numerous corporate boards, representing both management and investors, and on various academic and civic boards including Drive Oregon, the Oregon Council on Knowledge and Economic Development, the Portland State University Foundation, and its Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Advisory Board.

"Where a business is not as yet defined, but technology is available, we'll work to identify the business opportunity."

-Gordon Hoffman