McCombs Alumni Network News

From Eric Fortenberry
BBA ‘06

My name is Eric Fortenberry and I graduated from McCombs in May 2006. At McCombs, I studied finance and accounting and landed a great job following graduation at MHT Partners, a boutique investment bank. While my career as an investment banker offered the potential for upward mobility and a bright future, I realized that my true passion is to be an entrepreneur. In October 2006, I co-founded OrgSync with Nicole Andreas (McCombs, May ’08) and Tom O’Neill (University of Rochester, May ’07) and have been living and breathing the company ever since.

During my time at McCombs, I became very active in the University Investors Association and ended up becoming the treasurer and then president my senior year. As president, I gained experience leading a board of ten other student officers, while growing our membership from under 50 to 100+ members.

My junior year, I attended LeaderShape with 60 other McCombs students. We spent a week together without any cell phones or computers, breaking down all of our personal prejudices and social barriers, to then rebuild ourselves as leaders committed to “living in a state of possibility, making a commitment to a vision, developing relationships to move that vision into action and sustaining a high level of integrity.” We also learned how to take our visions and turn them into realities. Overall, the entire LeaderShape experience was very moving and inspirational, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has the chance to attend.

After graduating from McCombs, I spent nine short months as an investment banker, where I was exposed to various types of businesses across many different industries. It didn’t take me long though to find my passion was with technology and online software. The most influential deal I worked on was a software company that provided an online test preparation platform for grades K-12. The founders started the company out of one of their grandmothers’ basements with next to no money. Over the course of this deal I spent a lot of time talking with the founders, and I was able to learn exactly what it takes to start and grow a business to be sold at a significant valuation. I quickly fell in love with hosted software and realized the power of a subscription-based model and how the annuities can build up to create a cash cow.

Selling the company was a great learning experience, but it left me unsatisfied and more eager than ever to start my own. And that’s when Nicole Andreas decided to introduce me to Tom O’Neill. Nicole understood my passion and drive to be an entrepreneur and she also realized Tom’s ability to develop online software, thus making Tom and I perfect partners. 

To me, the most impressive thing about the first version of OrgSync was that Tom had the vision to build one of the first online group management and networking applications back in 2003, which was way before the rise of Silicon Valley and what is now known as Web 2.0. My experience as a student leader combined with my training from LeaderShape and the unique opportunity to work with a successful start-up during my short time as an investment banker ultimately gave me the confidence to walk away from my first job out of college to start OrgSync and follow my dream of being an entrepreneur.

The vision for OrgSync was a direct product of Nicole’s and my experiences running student organizations while at McCombs. Now, almost two and a half years later, OrgSync has over 20 employees, with clients at more than 100 campuses and is quickly becoming known as the industry leader in organization management at colleges and universities across the nation. I never would have thought that I would reach my dream at the young age of 25 thanks to my experiences at the McCombs School of Business.

Recently, Orgsync raised money to provide drinking water to help those in need. Read more.