Sean O’Sullivan

Sean O’Sullivan is the Managing Director of SOSV, a venture capital firm with $1.5 billion in assets under management.

A pioneering entrepreneur, O’Sullivan began his career in 1985 by founding MapInfo, which revolutionized PC street mapping, grew to over 1,000 employees, and generated $200 million in annual revenue. In 1996, while leading his second startup, NetCentric, he co-created the term “cloud computing” alongside Compaq’s George Favaloro.

Following MapInfo’s 1994 IPO, O’Sullivan launched SOSV as a “super angel” vehicle. He expanded it in 2007 into a global venture fund. Today, SOSV is led by 10 general partners across offices in San Francisco, New York, Newark, Cork, Pune, Princeton, and Singapore. Supported by a global staff of over 80, the firm funds 70 new startups annually and provides follow-on investments to over 150 deep-tech graduates of its signature programs (including HAX, SOSV SF and SOSV NY).

An active inventor with 30 patents, O’Sullivan is also a dedicated humanitarian and philanthropist. In 2003, he founded JumpStart International, leading the post-war humanitarian engineering organization through 2006 as it scaled to 3,000 staff and managed 80 projects across Iraq and the Gaza Strip. Through the O’Sullivan Foundation, he is a primary funder of educational and social initiatives like Khan Academy, I-ASC, and CoderDojo.

As the founding Chairman of the Irish Entrepreneurship Forum and founder of Open Ireland, O’Sullivan has significantly shaped Irish tech policy. His public presence includes serving as a regular investment panelist on RTÉ’s Dragon’s Den and writing for Ireland’s Sunday Business Post. He holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an MFA in Film Production from the University of Southern California.