Sean O'Sullivan (engineer)

Sean O'Sullivan is an entrepreneur, inventor and investor, born in New York City and currently living in Princeton, New Jersey. He is best known for co-founding MapInfo Corporation, which popularized street maps on computers, and for coining the term "Cloud Computing". He is the founder and Managing Partner at SOSV, a $250m venture capital operation. O'Sullivan has had an unusually diverse career, being described as a "renaissance man".

A major advocate of economic and social development, he founded JumpStart International in 2003. JumpStart was a humanitarian engineering organization based in Baghdad and operating throughout Iraq during the post-war period of 2003-2006.

As benefactor of the O’Sullivan Foundation, he has also been a primary funder of organizations such as the Khan Academy and CoderDojo. Also, as Chairman of the Irish Entrepreneurship Forum and founder of Open Ireland, he is a leader and influencer of Irish government policy in fueling economic growth and recovery in the Technology sector.

Sean O'Sullivan at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the early 1980s

In 1995, O' Sullivan founded SOSV (formerly SOSventures), a venture capital and investment management firm that seeks to invest in the earliest stages of start-up companies via a family of accelerator programs.

While at University of Southern California, he wrote and directed 16 short films and worked on over 100 student film and television projects in roles ranging from director of photography to editor to sound designer. O’Sullivan’s graduate thesis is a full-length documentary about dementia in the elderly. Called String Worms at Budd Terrace, the film won the 2005 “Silver Images” award for best documentary film about elderly issues. His short film Squirrel Nuts won “Best of Show-Narrative” at the UCLA Short-takes film competition and played on national television through the Independent Film Channel. During the war in Iraq, Mr. O’Sullivan worked as a freelance photographer and cameraman for publications and broadcast media.

O'Sullivan holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a Master of Fine Arts in Film Production from the University of Southern California.

Sean O'Sullivan in his dorm at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the early 1980s

• Entrepreneur of the Year Rensselaer, 2011
• Winner, “Silver Images” award 2005 for best documentary film about elderly issues
• Winner, “Best of Show-Narrative” for a short film entitled "Squirrel Nuts" UCLA Short-takes film competition

• -, -. "Sean O'Sullivan '85 Named Entrepreneur of the Year". Inside Rensselaer. Retrieved 13 August 2013. 
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