Author Profile

Buck Goldstein

Buck Goldstein is the University Entrepreneur in Residence and a Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics. Prior to returning to the University, Goldstein co-founded Information America, an online information company which was publicly traded and subsequently acquired by the Thomson Corporation. Subsequently, he was a partner in Mellon Ventures, the venture capital arm of Mellon Bank. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of UNC and an honors graduate of the UNC Law School.
Buck Goldstein has been involved in entrepreneurship most of his professional life. After six years as a practicing attorney, in 1982 he co-founded Information America, an online information company that developed hundreds of products from databases of public records collected and compiled from courthouses throughout the United States. Over the next sixteen years he led the company from start-up through several stages of venture capital financing to an initial public offering. In 1994, West Publishing, the largest legal publisher in the United States, acquired Information America. Goldstein served on the Executive Committee of West before and after its subsequent acquisition by Thomson, a multinational information and publishing company. Goldstein has been recognized as Entrepreneur of the Year by the Information Industry Association and Information America appeared numerous times in the Inc 500 list of rapidly growing businesses. In 1998, Goldstein founded NetWorth Partners, a venture capital fund focusing on information based enterprises with Mellon Ventures as its largest investor. NetWorth combined with Mellon Ventures in 2000 and Goldstein became a Mellon Ventures Partner. He served on the board of birectors of both private and public companies during his tenure at Mellon Ventures.
In the spring of 2004, Goldstein was appointed University Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Subsequently he was named Professor of the Practice in the Department of Economics. In these positions Goldstein is intimately involved in numerous activities aimed at making UNC a more entrepreneurial university including teaching and development work. He also serves as chairman of Medfusion, a Raleigh-based medical information technology company, a board observer for I-Contact, an RTP-based e-mail marketing company, and an advisor to Liquidia, a nano-technology company that was founded in the UNC chemistry department.
Goldstein received his A.B. from the University of North Carolina in 1970 where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and the Order of the Golden Fleece, the University's Highest Honorary Society. He received a M.Ed. from the University of Massachusetts in 1973, and a J.D. with Honors from the University of North Carolina in 1976 where he served on the Editorial Board of the UNC Law Review. In the spring semesters of 1997 and 1998, he served as an Adjunct Professor at the Goizueta School of Business at Emory University, teaching an MBA course entitled "Entrepreneurship on the Internet."