Lane Bess (born September 18, 1961) is a venture capitalist known for his work in technology. He has served as principal and founder of family fund Bess Ventures and Advisory, LLC, a strategic management, investment and marketing services firm, since February 2015.

Early life and education

Bess was born in Neptune City, New Jersey and graduated from Ocean Township High School in 1979. In 1983, Bess received a Bachelor of Science degree in Managerial Economics from

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

, then went on to receive an MBA degree from University of Dayton. Bess has served as a Trustee of Carnegie Mellon University since June 2019. In the same year, Bess and his wife Letty donated $10 million to Carnegie Mellon University to endow the dean's chair for the

Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences The Marianna Brown Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences (Dietrich College) is the liberal and professional studies college and the second-largest academic unit by enrollment (after the Carnegie Mellon College of Engineering) at Ca ...

Career

Early in his career, Bess held senior sales and marketing positions at

NCR Corporation NCR Corporation, previously known as National Cash Register, is an American software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactures self-service kiosks, point-of-sale termin ...

, where he oversaw multinational global sales. Then he went on to AT&T, where he was responsible for the product launches of AT&T's business and consumer internet services in the mid-1990s. From 2002 to 2008, Bess served as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales and General Manager of Trend Micro. In 2008, he became president and CEO of Palo Alto Networks, where he served until 2011, leading late fundraising and taking the company to its Initial public offering. From 2011 to 2015, Bess was the COO of

Zscaler Zscaler () is a cloud security company, with headquarters in San Jose, California. The company offers cloud migration services. History Zscaler was founded in 2007 by Jay Chaudhry and K. Kailash. In August 2012, Zscaler secured $38 million in f ...

, a company focused on cloud-based internet security services. Bess serves on the boards of several companies, including

Deep Instinct Deep Instinct is a cybersecurity company that applies deep learning to cybersecurity. The company implements advanced artificial intelligence to the task of preventing and detecting malware. The company was the recipient of the ''Technology Pioneer ...

, eSentire, TrueFort, ZeroFOX, PLUM (SPAC). In March 2015, Bess founded Bess Ventures and Advisory, where he serves as founder and principal. Some well-known investments of Bess Ventures and Advisory include Arista Networks, Nutanix, ThoughtSpot,

Rubrik Rubrik is a cloud data management and data security company based in Palo Alto, California, United States, founded in December 2013. History The company was founded in January 2014 by Bipul Sinha, Arvind Jain, Soham Mazumdar, and Arvind Nithraka ...

and

Spaceflight

On November 23, 2021, it was announced that Bess would fly into space aboard Blue Origin NS-19. The flight took place December 11, 2021.

Personal life

Bess lives in Miami Beach, Florida with his wife Letty. His son Cameron Bess accompanied him to space aboard Blue Origin NS-19, making them the first parent-child pair to fly to space together.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bess, Lane 1961 births Living people American financial businesspeople Carnegie Mellon University alumni University of Dayton alumni American venture capitalists Ocean Township High School alumni People from Neptune City, New Jersey Commercial astronauts New Shepard astronauts New Shepard passengers People who have flown in suborbital spaceflight