Bill Hambrecht founded WR Hambrecht + Co in 1998 and works with the board to manage the holdings of Ironstone Properties, Inc.  Hambrecht enjoys a storied career in Silicon Valley and co-founded investment bank partnership Hambrecht & Quist (H&Q) in 1968, which went public in 1996.  For more than 50 years, Hambrecht has identified early disruptive companies and helped them grow (click here for Bill's discussion with the Kauffman Foundation about startup investing).  H&Q was an early player in the technology sector, underwriting initial public offerings (IPOs) for Apple Computer, Genentech, and Adobe Systems in the 1980s. H&Q also backed the IPOs of Netscape, MP3.com, and Amazon.com in the 1990s. Bill advised Google executives on the use of an auction process to price shares in that company's 2004 IPO and helped bring Interactive Brokers (IBKR) public in 2007 through the use of the OpenIPO modified Dutch Auction process (click here to learn more about the Google story).  ​

 

Ironstone seeks to identify disruptive companies that have the potential to grow for decades. Hambrecht collaborated for more than twenty years with Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen, author of "The Innovator's Dilemma," to implement Christensen's "Disruption Theory."  Disruptive companies start at the low end markets and target underserved customers in new markets at price points considered unattractive by larger, more established companies.   ​Ironstone (IRNS) holds stakes in Tango,  Aristotle (PredictIt) and Buoy Health today as potentially disruptive growth companies.  ​​