Mr. Oster started his career as a professional economist and moved on to become CFO of several companies, taking two of them public. Since 1987, he has been a private investor working with other private and institutional investors in all phases of the venture investing process from incubation and due diligence through building the management team and sale of the company or initial public offering.  He was a first round investor and Director of LifeUSA Holding, Inc. a life and annuity company that went public and was later merged into Allianz Life of North America.  He was a first round investor and special advisor to Informatica, Inc. (“INFA”), a provider of data integration software.  Also, he was a founding investor and director of several search fund companies:  Asurion, Inc., a specialty insurance company; Pacific Pulmonary Services, (now part of Teijin Holdings) an oxygen and medications company; Carillon Assisted Living, Raleigh, NC, a private assisted living company; and Wind River Environmental, Boston, MA, a private roll-up in the non-hazardous liquid waste industry.  He is currently a founding investor and director of iNET Interactive, Dayton, OH, a private internet advertising company, Raptor Technology, Houston, TX, a private public school visitor management software company, and IWTS, Chicago, Il, a private industrial water treatment services company, SFL Data, San Francisco, CA, a private e-discovery legal company, a special limited partner for Spring Ridge Ventures, a venture capital partnership focusing on health care, and an investor in and advisor to several small private equity funds.



Mr. Oster received a BA in economics from Occidental College in 1963 and an MA and Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1965 and 1967, respectively.  He is an Overseer and Vice-Chairman of The Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Chairman of Summit Public Schools, a charter public high school management organization in the Silicon Valley.