Eric Cantor

Co-founder & CEO

2019 - Current

Managing Director

2011

Mobile Global is a boutique strategy firm focused on web and mobile business-building and advice. The company is engaged with a small number of Internet and mobile startups, as well as social enterprises, advising them on growth and development. It also looks to incubate and develop promising startup concepts.

Entrepreneur In Residence

2018 - 2019

ConsenSys is building the decentralized future. I formed a team, raised funding and led prototype development for delegated voting products on ethereum, and signed initial customers. Laster guided spin out from the incubator. Also analyzed & led a variety of investment deals via internal funding platform.

Adjunct Professor

2013 - 2019

Eric teaches "Technology Solutions for International Development and Social Change" in Columbia's International Affairs Masters Program, and serves as faculty supervisor to a ICT-related student projects. His course enables students to identify and explore a problem area they wish to solve investigating its contours and the reality of those it affects. Next, they form teams to review potential technology solutions, design Minimum Viable Products and in the "final exam" pitch those concepts to professional Venture Capitalists for feedback. Several course teams are still operating the businesses created in the course, and creating global impact.

Mentor, Internet of Things Program

2017 - 2017

Advised accelerator cohort IoT businesses on fundraising, pricing, business models and team-building.

VP Product Development

2014 - 2017

Eric led development and deployment of fintech product that improves cash flow and helps workers avoid payday loans, under a cross-industry joint venture. Under his leadership, the product team researched, prototyped and tested various iterations of the product with hundreds of users prior to launching via B2B channel. WageGoal has been recognized as leading Fintech venture by participation in JPMC/CFSI Financial Solution Labs’ first cohort and in other forums.

Founding Board Member

2011 - 2016

Venture for America is a program for young, talented grads to spend 2 years in the trenches of a start-up with the goal that these graduates will become socialized and mobilized as entrepreneurs moving forward. As a founding board member, Eric works with the team to help align resources, strategy and tactics to enable the organization to fulfill its mission.

Venture Partner

2013 - 2014

Evaluating the potential for a social venture seed fund, we diligenced more than twenty-five socially impactful technology businesses and made investments in four. Recommended a growth strategy for the organization which led to establishing an impact lab later acquired by Robin Hood. Several ventures from the initial cohort have grown to generate substantial impact.

Founding Director & Product Lead, AppLab Uganda

2007 - 2010

Eric established a Google-funded mobile product lab and built its 35-member team. He led product prototyping and development for 14 concepts, leading more than 100 contributors across Google, MTN, AppLab and local NGOs. Designed, tested and built “Google SMS Health”, which launched nationally & won Social & Economic Development Product of the Year at 2010 GSM World Summit. AppLab tests, develops and scales mobile phone services that empower low-income customers to improve their lives. Eric developed a suite of SMS search products - later launched as Google SMS - that served more than 4 million queries from 300,000 Ugandans. Under Eric's leadership, the Joint Venture between MTN Uganda, Google, and Grameen Foundation subsequently raised $4.7 million in seed funding from Gates Foundation to build the Community Knowledge Worker(CKW) business - an Android-based mobile applications suite through a microfranchise business model to automate information flows between farmer production and marketing groups and agricultural buyers. Eric helped develop similar opportunities in Ghana and Indonesia in the areas of mobile health and informal sector job matching. He also worked closely with the MTN Mobile Money product team to integrate mobile money services into AppLab products and processes.

Technology Business Manager

2005 - 2007

Acumen Fund invests in pro-poor businesses in East Africa and South Asia. Eric held a variety of positions in its early phases. He raised funding to create a Business Technology Solutions Team, for which he sourced a pipeline of 12 potential technology & energy investments and initiated a number of prototype concepts for using mobile phones to reach underserved market segments. He established the renowned Acumen Fellows Program, hiring the first 8 of what would become a corps of hundreds of oustanding social entrepreneurs. He opened the East Africa regional office in Kenya with the firm's founding Africa Director.