RICK CORCORAN
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Rick has been an investor, entrepreneur, operator and consultant. Rick is a Founder and Partner of Slate Venture Group, a private equity firm based in Baltimore, MD. Rick cofounded and currently serves as President of Let’s Dish! Mid-Atlantic, a retail chain of meal assembly stores in Maryland and Virginia.

Prior to Slate, Rick cofounded The New Virginia Company (NVC), a private buyout firm focused on small-to-middle-market companies in the mid-Atlantic region. As an extension of NVC's healthcare work, he helped develop a niche practice doing Board-level strategic financial consulting projects in the hospital industry.

Before NVC, Rick worked for The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), in both its Boston and Washington, DC offices. There, he gained experience in a variety of fields, including retail, consumer goods, distribution, health care, media and financial services. He also did extensive pro-bono work on inner-city economic development. He served for over a year in BCG's private equity practice, sourcing deals and performing due diligence for major private equity clients. While at BCG, he also held internal leadership positions in undergraduate recruiting and analyst training.

Rick has also been a sales account manager at Procter & Gamble, a business development manager at Excite@Home, and a founder/manager of a retail business selling furniture and accessories. He got his entrepreneurial start when he founded a landscaping/house painting business that he grew throughout high school and college.

A lifelong athlete, Rick played basketball for three years in college. Later, he co-founded Team Tiger Adventure, an adventure racing team which competed successfully around the USA and officially completed the 1999 Eco Challenge in Patagonia, Argentina. Rick continues to train for road and trail races and ultra-hiking expeditions, and he still plays basketball weekly.

Rick is a 1995 graduate of Princeton University and received his M.B.A. from Stanford University in 2000.

Rick and his wife, Alexa, have two daughters and live in Baltimore, MD.

ERIK GINSBERG
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Erik has worked in the private equity industry for over 15 years. Erik is a Founder and Partner of Slate Venture Group, a private equity firm based in Baltimore, MD. He cofounded and is the former President of Let’s Dish! Mid-Atlantic, a retail chain of meal assembly stores in Maryland and Virginia, and Managing Director of Blackmore Partners, an M&A advisory firm established to support exceptional executives with acquisition strategies.

Prior to founding Slate, Erik was a Director with DB Capital Venture Partners, investing in enterprise infrastructure and application software companies. He joined ABS Ventures, the predecessor to DBCVP, in March 2000. During his tenure with DBCVP/ABS Ventures, Erik served on the boards of several software portfolio companies.

From 1996-2000, Erik was a Senior Vice President with Sterling Capital, Ltd., a private equity investment firm, where he acquired and ran companies in the direct marketing and e-commerce industries (although the firm acquired businesses in various industries, including education/testing, specialty distribution, and marketing services). His tenure included operating stints with two of Sterling’s portfolio companies: as the Chief Executive Officer of NLP, Inc. and as Executive Vice President-Corporate Development of ICS, Inc.

From 1993-1996, Erik was an Associate with Kirkland & Ellis in their private equity group, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, leveraged buyouts and venture capital transactions. Representative clients included Bain Capital; Clipper Group; Code, Hennessy and Simmons; CIVC (Willis Stein); Dakota Capital; Liberty Partners and Madison Dearborn Partners.

Erik received his B.A. from Brown University in 1988 and his J.D./M.B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1993.

Erik lives in Baltimore, MD with his wife, Lisa, and three children.