History

Founded in 1977, O’Connor & Associates operated independently as a proprietary derivatives trading boutique until it was acquired by Swiss Bank Corporation in 1995. At that time, O’Connor & Associates was one of the largest independent derivatives trading firms in the world. As part of the acquisition, the O’Connor & Associates general partners served in various leadership capacities within Swiss Bank, including CEO of North America, COO and CIO. In 1998, following the acquisition of Swiss Bank by UBS, the former general partners of O’Connor & Associates formed the O’Connor Partners Investment Office (OPIO) to manage a portion of their collective wealth in alternative assets.

Net-HOPPER, an investment made in 1994, marked the first direct venture capital investment by the OCA Ventures team. Following the success of Net-HOPPER, in 1999, Jim Dugan began making direct venture capital investments along with several former partners of O’Connor & Associates which ultimately became the building blocks known as the OCA Ventures Pledge Fund. The OCA Ventures Pledge Fund subsequently made investments in nine companies raising capital principally from OPIO on a deal-by-deal basis.

In 2001, Jim Dugan, John Dugan and Peter Ianello formed OCA Ventures I, a formal blind-pool venture capital fund with OPIO as the principal limited partner. Eddie Lou and Jason Heltzer were both hired in that year to join the investment team. The team honed the fund’s investment strategy with respect to stage, industry and business models, deploying capital into 12 high-growth companies. In the process, OCA Ventures syndicated with more than 26 different institutional investors and assisted in raising in excess of $100M in follow-on equity capital.

The OCA Ventures team has parlayed the success of OCA Ventures I to raise its third and current fund, OCA Ventures II, which aims to be at least three times larger than OCA Ventures I and includes outside institutional capital.

The name “OCA” pays homage to the legacy of O’Connor & Associates, which used the call letters “OCA” on their trading badges on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Respecting that legacy, the OCA Ventures team aspires to instill the same values that made O’Connor & Associates a world-class company.