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Mike Volpi | |
|---|---|
 Mike Volpi in 2015 | |
| Born | Michelangelo Volpi (1966-12-13)December 13, 1966 (age 59) |
| Alma mater | Stanford University |
| Occupations | Venture capitalist, businessperson |
| Years active | 1989-present |
| Employer | Partner atIndex Ventures |
| Board member of | Fiat Chrysler Automobiles,Castilleja School,Knight-Hennessy Scholars |
Michelangelo "Mike"Volpi (born 13 December 1966) is an Italian-American businessman andventure capitalist.
He worked as an engineer, eventually becomingchief strategy officer atCisco Systems during the company’s growth era, acquiring over 70 companies in less than five years.[1][2]
He co-foundedIndex Ventures’San Francisco office withDanny Rimer in 2009.
Volpi was born inMilan, Italy. When he was five, his family moved toTokyo, Japan, where he lived until he moved to the United States in 1984 to attendcollege.
He earned a BS in mechanical engineering (1984-1988) and an MS in manufacturing systems engineering (1988-1989) fromStanford University.[3] After working at HP for several years, returned to Stanford to earn anM.B.A. from the Graduate School of Business (1992-1994).[3]
Volpi began his career atHewlett Packard's optoelectronics division in 1989 where he was both in engineering and marketing.[1]
While at HP, he met his future wife Toni C. Cupal.[4]
Volpi joined Cisco Systems in 1994 in the nascent business development group. He was promoted to leading acquisitions at Cisco starting in April 1996. As chief strategy officer he led corporate strategy, business development, and strategic alliances. Their acquisition strategy of Volpi and his team at Cisco is used as model for technologymergers and acquisitions.[5] he was promoted to the chief strategy office working for CEOJohn Chambers until 2000. Some press speculated he washeir apparent to Chambers.[6][7]
Moving into an operational role as a senior vice president and general manager, he led the routing and switching teams, then co-led the routing and service provider group with Prem Jain until 2007.[8]
During this time Cisco's firstCarrier Routing System product was announced, the CRS-1, in 2004.[9]
After Cisco in 2007 he becameentrepreneur in residence (EIR) atSequoia Capital.
A few months later, he was appointed CEO ofJoost,[10][11][7][12][13][14] an Internet startup focused on online TV which was founded bySkype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis.[15] In September 2009, a lawsuit was filed against Volpi by Skype’s founders in conjunction with the proposed divestiture of Skype from eBay.[16] The lawsuit was dropped in November 2009.[17]
At Index Ventures, Volpi invests in early-stage companies, primarily acrossautonomous driving, enterprise andopen source.[18] Volpi has served on the boards of Index portfolio companies Big Switch Networks,Blue Bottle Coffee (acquired by Nestle),[19] Confluent Software, Elastic,Hortonworks, Lookout,Pure Storage,Sonos, Ubiquity6, andZuora.[20][21]
During Volpi's time at Index, the grew its office inSan Francisco to an equal presence on both sides of theAtlantic Ocean.[22] From 2012 to 2018, the firm had sixinitial public offerings in the US, includingDropbox,Etsy,Sonos andZuora, and has invested in early rounds of companies including self-driving car startupAurora,[23]Bird andRobinhood.[24]
Volpi is a non-executive board member ofFiat Chrysler Automobiles, an independent director of European investment firmExor,[25] and was a board member of Swedish mobile giantEricsson from 2010 to 2013.[26][27] He served on the board(s) ofOpsware (nowHP),[28]TIBCO Software,Skype,StorSimple,Cloud.com, andClearwire.
Volpi serves sits on the board ofCastilleja School, an independent school for girls grades six through twelve inPalo Alto, California,[29] and is a Global Advisory Board Member atKnight-Hennessy Scholars, an international graduate-level scholarship program for study atStanford University.[30] He served on the board ofWitness, a non-profit organization that uses video to findhuman rights violations,[31] and on the advisory council for theStanford University Graduate School of Business.
Volpi is trilingual, and married with 2 children.
His father is Vittorio Volpi, an executive at theUnited Bank of Switzerland.[4]