Professor Gal is a career entrepreneur, an educator of entrepreneurs, and an advisor to early stage companies.
Gal is currently a visiting associate professor of clinical entrepreneurship at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University and a visiting associate professor at the Rady School of Management at UCSD, where he teaches entrepreneurship across the MBA programs. He also advises and serves as a board member at early stage companies.
Gal’s career as a technology entrepreneur began in 1994, when as a professor in the Entrepreneur Program at USC's Marshall School of Business, the advent of the commercial Internet drew he and many of his students into the startup world. Over almost 20 years, he has founded, funded, built and/or turned around six technology companies as an operating executive, participating in over $100 million in venture financings, multiple sales and an IPO, while serving on multiple for-profit and not-for-profit boards, and has been an angel investor and advisor to entrepreneurs and their companies.
Gal was a co-founder and CEO of Semio, developers of early seminal technology in Internet and Intranet search (acquired by LucidMedia), where he raised both angel and venture capital for his first technology venture. He was a co-founder, board member and executive at ID Analytics, where the team raised over $40 million in venture funding to build and operate the US National Identity Network and produce the real-time ID Score which is the de facto standard in preventing identity fraud. Gal was vice president of marketing at eMarketing company PrimeResponse, where he was a member of the executive team that took the company public (NASDAQ:PRME, acquired by Pegasystems, NASDAQ:PEGA); and at eSupport vendor Inference, where he helped lead a turnaround and successful sale (NASDAQ: INFR, acquired by eGain, NASDAQ: EGAN); and at the analytics firm HNC Software (NASDAQ: HNCS, acquired by Fair Isaac, NYSE: FICO), the provider of the FICO Score. He was also chairman and CEO at ProQuo.com, where he raised $15 million in venture financing for a consumer privacy offering.
Before his careers in teaching and technology, Gal spent several years on Wall Street in risk arbitrage and on the floor of the New York Futures Exchange. He is an attorney and a member of the California Bar. Steven currently serves on the Advisory Council for Entrepreneurship@Cornell, the Advisory Council for eLab and on Cornell’s University Council. He holds a doctor of jurisprudence degree from University of Southern California School of Law and a bachelor's degree from Cornell University.
