David A. Ulevitch (born December 10, 1981) is an American

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

and

Venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...

. He was the founder and CEO of the enterprise security company

OpenDNS OpenDNS is an American company providing Domain Name System (DNS) resolution services—with features such as phishing protection, optional content filtering, and DNS lookup in its DNS servers—and a cloud computing security product suite, Umbre ...

(acquired by

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...

) and founder of

EveryDNS EveryDNS.net was one of the world's largest free DNS management services, at one time providing DNS services for over 135,000 domains, for over a decade, ending in 2011. History EveryDNS was founded in June 2001 by David Ulevitch. On January 7, ...

(acquired by Dyn). In December, 2016, Ulevitch was named the Senior Vice President and General Manager of

's Security Business. In October, 2018, Ulevitch joined

Andreessen Horowitz Andreessen Horowitz (also called a16z, legal name AH Capital Management, LLC) is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. Andreessen ...

as a General Partner investing in American Dynamism, Enterprise, SaaS, National Defense, National Security, Cybersecurity, and other areas.

Career

Ulevitch entered the Internet industry while in junior high school, working at San Diego area Internet service provider Electriciti, at a time when Electriciti and its president Chris Alan were founding members of

Packet Clearing House Packet Clearing House (PCH) is the international nonprofit organization responsible for providing operational support and security to critical internet infrastructure, including Internet exchange points and the core of the domain name system. ...

, which was then building one of the first

Internet exchange points The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

, at nearby

UC San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Insti ...

. In May of 2001, while a student at Washington University, Ulevitch created

to fill his need for web-based

DNS The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical and distributed naming system for computers, services, and other resources in the Internet or other Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It associates various information with domain names assigned to ...

management software. EveryDNS grew from a personal project to a service with nearly 100,000 users worldwide within a few years. In January, 2010, EveryDNS was acquired by Manchester, NH company, Dyn, Inc. In July, 2006, Ulevitch launched

, a recursive DNS service focused on performance and security. On June 30, 2015

announced that it was buying OpenDNS for $635 million. In October, 2018, Ulevitch left

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develo ...

and joined

as a General Partner. In June, 2019, Ulevitch joined the board of directors of

AnyRoad AnyRoad is an American company that develops and sells Engagement marketing, experiential marketing software. AnyRoad's platform combines operational tools that streamline event management with robust data capture and actionable analytics, providi ...

as part of a $9.2 million investment into the company by Andreessen Horowitz.

Awards and recognition

In 2014,

Inc. Magazine ''Inc.'' is an American business magazine founded in 1979 and based in New York City. The magazine publishes six issues per year, along with surrounding online and social media content. The magazine also produces several live and virtual events y ...

named Ulevitch to their annual "35 Under 35" list of entrepreneurs. Ulevitch's company, OpenDNS, was selected as a

World Economic Forum The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

Technology Pioneer in 2011.Empowering People and Transforming Society: The World Economic Forum’s Technology Pioneers 2011
World Economic Forum, p. 22

References

Sources

David Ulevitch's Bio on OpenDNS.com

External links

David Ulevitch's Website

1981 births Washington University in St. Louis alumni 20th-century American Jews Living people 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American Jews {{US-compu-bio-stub