Venture Capital · Profile from Venture Capital Research Companion
American Research and Development Corporation
The Boston company Georges Doriot ran from 1946 to 1972: the first institutional venture-capital firm, which turned MIT science into companies, proved the power law with Digital Equipment, and showed through its own decline why venture capital later moved into the limited-partnership model.
At a glance
- Founded
- June 1946, Boston, Massachusetts
- Founders
- Georges F. Doriot (president; HBS professor), Ralph E. Flanders (president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, later US Senator; first chairman), Karl T. Compton (president of MIT), Merrill Griswold (chairman of Massachusetts Investors Trust), with support from HBS dean Donald K. David and Boston business leaders
- Headquarters
- Boston, Massachusetts (John Hancock Building offices)
- Ownership / structure
- Publicly traded closed-end investment company, regulated under the Investment Company Act of 1940; not a limited partnership
- Leadership (2026)
- Defunct. Merged into Textron in 1972; Doriot died in 1987
- AUM / capital raised
- ~$3.5m raised in the 1946 offering (target was $5m); later share offerings; net assets reached several hundred million dollars by ~1971, mostly from the DEC stake (reported)
- Stage focus
- Founding and early-stage equity in technology and industrial companies, mostly in New England; long holding periods
- Signature investments
- Digital Equipment Corporation (1957; ~$70,000 for ~70%, worth ~$355m by 1971), High Voltage Engineering, Ionics, Tracerlab. Weaknesses: many low-return early holdings, inability to pay staff with equity, failed succession
4 deals and moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
1946
High Voltage Engineering
Founding Investment
1946
Tracerlab
Early-Stage Equity Investment
1948
Ionics
Early-Stage Equity Investment
1957
Digital Equipment Corporation
Founding Equity Investment