Jeremy Degenhart
“I was always impressed by Jeremy’s attention to detail and helping us reach a conclusion as quickly as possible. He was/is always ready to engage in a conversation with anyone about the class content. I can say his classes were my favorite at Olin so far.” Seyed Mousavi, MBA 2025
“Professor Degenhart is an outstanding lecturer and professor. His knowledge and expertise about financial transactions and private equity are valuable, and he ensures that he brings them into the classroom for each lecture. His passion for the subject is reflected in every lecture, and he has an ample network of speakers, which enriches the student experience.
Overall, he is a professional, and WashU Olin is lucky to have a professor of his caliber among its ranks.” Carlos Morantes, MBA 2025
Jeremy Degenhart is a Professor of Practice in the Finance department, where his courses focus on venture capital and private equity. His subject matter and teaching methods often reflect the atypical career journey that brought him to the Olin faculty.
After completing his undergraduate work in finance right here at Olin, Jeremy had a 17-year first career as an investment professional with Advantage Capital, a multi-billion dollar diversified venture capital, private equity, and small business lending firm. His various roles there ultimately spanned several functional areas within Advantage, but most of his time was spent sourcing, negotiating, closing, managing, and exiting equity and near-equity investments in small, privately-held companies.
While still working at Advantage, Jeremy agreed to teach a course on VC and private equity at Olin as a part-time adjunct. It didn’t take him long to realize that he found working with students more enjoyable than working with lawyers, accountants, and bankers (no offense intended to any of these professions)! Eventually the fit led to Jeremy joining the faculty full-time.
Drawing on his time spent in industry, Jeremy’s series of courses on venture capital and private equity blend practical lessons from an extensive roster of guest lecturers, in-depth cases drawn from his own investment experience, applied projects assigned by private fund managers, and key takeaways from recent academic research. The courses concentrate on preparing students for the specific challenges faced by investors in the early phases of their careers, and numerous former students have gone on to positions with private funds.
“I’ve been fortunate to spend my entire career in private capital market investing. Helping Olin students launch their own careers in this exciting but notoriously difficult field is the ultimate measure of success for me,” says Jeremy.
Unable to leave industry behind entirely, Jeremy continues to consult occasionally for Advantage Capital as an outside Venture Partner. He is also a board member at First Bank of the Lake, an innovative and rapidly-growing national lender to small businesses, and Chairperson of the Advisory Board for the InvestMidwest Venture Capital Forum.
During the school year, all this activity doesn’t leave much time for leisure beyond occasionally unwinding with a glass of wine paired with either a friendly conversation, or failing that, a few pages of an escapist novel. Recent favorites include a Mick Herron spy thriller and hard science fiction by Adrian Tchaikovsky.
Jeremy does make the most of his academic breaks, though. His wife Sarah is a high school librarian, so along with daughters Theresa (18), Imogen (15), and Gianna (12), the whole family of five operates on an academic calendar. During winter break, you’ll find them in rural Southern Illinois opening the girls’ enormous pile of Christmas gifts from their grandparents and uncle; for spring break, you’ll typically find them downhill skiing somewhere in the Rockies; and over the summer, they’ll likely be traveling to a new destination abroad for several weeks. On either side of that summer trip, Jeremy will be catching a few Cardinals baseball games at Busch Stadium – he’s a native-born St. Louisan and a lifelong fan of the ball club and of the city itself.
“The best part of FIN 500Z for me was being able to further communicate with the professor after group discussions to analyze and discuss whether our group’s ideas were reasonable.” Ruijie Jin, SMP