Dr. Olsen's first company was EPITAXX, a fiber optic detector manufactuer that he founded in 1984 together with Vladimir Ban. As Dr. Olsen describes, his move from research scientist at Sarnoff to entrepreneur was motivated by an opportunity to take something further in a way he felt could be done "better, faster and cheaper". He had no early childhood dreams of entrepreneurship, but possessed a passion of what he could achieve with the company's product under his own control of development. Six years later EPITAXX was sold for $12 million and within two years, he partnered again to found Sensors Unlimited, a near infrared camera manufacturer. Again another opportunity was presented to Dr. Olsen during the frenetic days of the Internet and Telecomm boom when company valuations skyrocketed. He yielded to good fortune and sold Sensors Unlimited for $600 million in 2000. Dr. Olsen saw this as an opportunity that could not be refused with a payout that would benefit many company employees, not just himself and Marshall Cohen, the company co-founder. During this period he saw the projected valuation of the company rise from $40 million to $400 million and then to an almost dizzying $600 million. In a strange quirk of circumstances, Sensors Unlimited was repurchased by Dr. Olsen and his management team in 2002 for $6 million and sold again in 2005 for $60 million.
With a huge payoff from the sale of Sensors Unlimited, Dr. Olsen wrote his own check to become the third private citizen to orbit the earth on the International Space Station. Following five months of training, he launched into Space on October 1, 2005 with Cosmonaut Valeri Tokarev and Astronaut Bill McArthur (Expedition 12). During his ten days in Space he performed more than 150 orbits of the earth and logged almost 4 million miles of weightless travel.
Today Dr. Olsen, as President, runs GHO Ventures in Princeton where he manages his angel investments that include a South African winery and Montana ranch. He actively speaks to a variety of audiences about his space travel and his business accomplishments, strongly encouraging children, especially women and minorities to pursue studies in engineering and science. Asked in retrospect about dreaming big, Dr. Olsen sees himself not so much as a visionary, but more as a tenancious person who was lucky enough to have been surrounded by good people, "I just refused to give up" he explains in his own words. He places perseverance at the top of personal attributes for entrepreneurial success. He was the son of an electrician from Bay Ridge, New York who repeated a high school math course in summer school, but went on to receive a BSEE and MS Physics from Fairleigh Dickinson and a Ph.D in Materials Science from the University of Virginia. He has been awarded 12 patents and has writen more than 100 technical papers. Looking back at what he feels about taking risk? Dr. Olsen downplays that aspect of thinking, noting there are risks in everything in life, even crossing the street.
To hear Dr. Olsen in his own words visit the home page of NJEntrepreneur.com where video clips of his interview may be seen
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