Olga Bartnicki

Olga joins Arizona FORGE as one of our Executives-in-Residence, where she will apply her vast experience as a four-time founder and as the current Managing Director of the NY Barclays (FinTech) Accelerator, powered by Techstars to assist the FORGE startups as they scale their companies. 

Olga said: “Turning ideas into businesses is a passion that I formed in my early childhood. My father was a gifted inventor, however, none of his patents were ever turned into products. Frustrated to know that some break-through innovations would only ever live on paper, I became driven by making ideas real, turning innovation into reality.”

During her early career, Olga launched new ventures at a large media conglomerate, invested in startups as an investment banker at Allen&Co, and ideated and launched new products as a strategy consultant for Merck, Reuters, and Thompson. Olga then jumped into the trenches of the startup battlefield and her successes and failures as an entrepreneur gave her important first-hand experience in four verticals (healthcare, entertainment, e-commerce, and enterprise SaaS) and five business models (retail, subscription, 2-sided marketplace, revenue share, and licensing fees). After two failures, Olga built two companies with successful exits to Oracle and to Bessemer Ventures.

Olga has earned a Master of Sciences degree from the University of Colorado and an MBA from Harvard Business School.