Mark Tebbe

After many years of judging and mentoring in Booth’s New Venture Challenge (NVC), Mark Tebbe brings a wealth of successful entrepreneurial experience into the classroom by leveraging his founding of two NASDAQ-listed corporations as well as direct involvement in numerous start-up and high-growth companies over the past thirty years. As both an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Tebbe aids students in their entrepreneurial efforts and helps other professors enhance their classes. Outside of the classroom, in addition to being a prolific angel investor, Tebbe volunteers as Chairman of ChicagoNEXT, a dedicated public-private effort to raise Chicago’s profile in science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship. In 1984, Mark founded Lante Corporation, (NASDAQ: LNTE) a Chicago-based technology-consulting firm in which he served as CEO and Chairman. Using $10,000 borrowed on his credit card, Tebbe launched the technology advisory firm that helped to create over 250 new businesses as well as building backend infrastructure and websites for established companies including Microsoft, Dell, American Airlines, American Express and Charles Schwab. Lante was taken private by SBI Group in September 2002 and sold (as Razorfish) to aQuantive in July 2004. In September 2004, Tebbe was Co-Founder, Vice-Chairman of the Board and Lead Director of Answers Corporation, (NASDAQ: ANSW). Building on his inspiration to create a productive website to aid his son on researching a school essay, Tebbe co-conceived the answers.com website which became one of the Web’s leading Q&A publishers and was sold to Announce Media in July 2011.