Jeffrey Eschbach
Clinical Assistant Professor of Strategy
Entrepreneurship Program Outreach Lead
JEFFREY ESCHBACH is an investor, entrepreneur, and professor with over 20 years of experience developing new businesses.
As a founder and CEO, he built and successfully exited Page Vault Inc., an award-winning tech company that transforms Internet content into evidence for legal cases. Page Vault is listed as an Inc. 5000 company and serves a majority of the Am Law 200 as customers.
Jeffrey also co-founded Chicago Early Growth Ventures, an investor network which targets early-stage deals across the country. In addition to financial returns, the group also seeks to develop the pool of active investors in the Chicago ecosystem by educating and introducing members to vetted deal opportunities. Over the past six years, the group has invested in more than 95 portfolio companies and attracted over 300 members.
Before entering the startup world, Jeffrey built a career leading tech R&D initiatives within international corporations including Intel Japan and Motorola Research Labs. He directed novel tech ideas through the full product development life cycle, guiding proposals from concept-phase to fully deployed solutions. His leadership positions have spanned technical R&D, product management, and corporate strategy, with assignments across Asia, Latin America, and the US.
He is also a National Science Foundation Fellow and has earned 11 USPTO patents related to cloud computing for novel business applications. Jeffrey’s work has driven real-world innovations in the areas of context-aware communications, virtual and augmented reality platforms, and mission-critical wireless networks.
Within academia, Jeffrey is as a Clinical Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship within the Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches on startup fundamentals and early-stage investing. He also serves as the Kellogg Entrepreneurship Program Outreach Lead, mentoring students in the Executive/EMBA and Evening & Weekend programs with their new ventures. Jeffrey earned both his BS with distinction and MS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University. He later received his MBA with highest honors from the Kellogg School of Management.
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MBA, 2013, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, Top Student Award, Kellogg's Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, 2013
MS, 1998, Electrical Engineering (Networking & Com. Arch.), Purdue University, National Science Foundation Fellowship Recipient
BS, 1995, Computer and Electrical Engineering, Purdue University, Purdue Senior & Junior EE of the Year. National Senior EE of the Year (Eta Kappa Nu Honorary) Runner -
Adjunct Professor in the Farley Center, Farley Center, Northwestern University, 2023-present
Clinical Assistant Professor in the Strategy Department, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2024-present
Entrepreneurship Program Outreach Lead for Kellogg’s Fully-Employed student communities (Evening and Weekend and EMBA programs)., Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2023-present
Adjunct Lecturer in the Kellogg Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2017-2019
Associate Director of Venture Creation for the Kellogg Entrepreneurship Program, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2022-2023
Director of Program Outreach for the Kellogg Entrepreneurship Program, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2019-2021
Adjunct Professor, MBAi Program, McCormick School of Engineering, Northwestern University, 2021-present
Adjunct Professor in Entrepreneurship, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2019-2024 -
Managing General Partner, Workbox Ventures, 2025-present
Founder and Principal, Chicago Early Growth Ventures, 2019-present
CEO, Page Vault Inc., 2013-present
Senior R&D Solutions Manager, Motorola Solutions, 2006-2012
New Product Manager, Motorola Solutions, 2003-2005
Technical Research Lead, Motorola Solutions, 1998-2003
Technical Marketing Lead, Intel Japan K.K., 1995-1996
Technical Marketing Engineer, Intel Corp, 1993-1995
Early Stage Investing & Fundraising (ENTRX-970-0)
Industry AI Capstone Project (MBAI-490-0)
Industry AI Capstone Project
This course is available only to students in the MBAI Program
Technical Product Management (MBAI-420-0)
The Technical Product Management course is designed as an introductory course for students interested in Product Management and who lack previous experience in this area. This course aims to prepare students with a comprehensive understanding of the key concepts, frameworks and tools needed to become effective product managers. The goal of this course is to equip students with not just basic, but also advanced product management knowledge, and will cover a wide range of topics. Students will gain knowledge and insights through lectures, a group project, targeted cases, and readings. Through the group project, students will evaluate user needs, specify functional requirements, and create a vision of how a user would experience their product. Students will attend weekly class sessions to learn product management frameworks and participate in skill-building exercises with deliverables due every week simulating what would be a typical product development process.
Field Study (ENTR-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.
New Venture Discovery (ENTR-462-0)
New Venture Discovery is designed to help students navigate the earliest stages of starting a new venture beginning with the identification of a problem in the market that is worth solving. The class teaches students tools and techniques to translate these problems into viable business concepts, with an emphasis on enabling an aspiring entrepreneur to get as far as possible, with as little as possible, as FAST as possible.
Student teams begin the quarter with nothing more than a series of hypotheses about a new venture, then design and execute a series of in-market experiments that either validate these assumptions, or force them to iterate aspects of their business model in real time. The objective of the course to guide students toward the achievement of "product-market fit" as a crucial first step in in the creation of a startup. From here, students can evolve their businesses by enrolling in the "Develop" and "Launch" courses that serve as the continuation of the new ventures curriculum.
New Venture Discovery course material ranges from customer discovery and design thinking, to rapid prototyping (of both offers and business models), bootstrapping methods and communicating/selling the vision for a new venture. The course format is a blend of lecture, fieldwork, cross-team collaboration and ideation sessions, outside speakers and expert mentoring.
**This course may not be dropped after the second week of the quarter**
