Michelangelo "Mike" Volpi (born 13 December 1966) is an Italian-American businessman and

venture capitalist 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 hav ...

. He worked as an engineer, eventually becoming

chief strategy officer A chief strategy officer (CSO) is an executive that usually reports to the CEO and has primary responsibility for strategy formulation and management, including developing the corporate vision and strategy, overseeing strategic planning, and leading ...

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 ...

during the company’s growth era, acquiring over 70 companies in less than five years. He co-founded

Index Ventures Index Ventures is a European venture capital firm with dual headquarters in San Francisco and London, investing in technology-enabled companies with a focus on e-commerce, fintech, mobility, gaming, infrastructure/ AI, and security. Since its f ...

’

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

office with

Danny Rimer Danny Rimer OBE (born 1970) is a partner at Index Ventures, a global venture capital firm founded in Geneva in 1992. Rimer opened the firm's London office in 2002 and its San Francisco office in 2012. He has become a leading voice on venture capi ...

in 2009.

Early life

Volpi was born in

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...

, Italy. When he was five, his family moved to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

, Japan, where he lived until he moved to the United States in 1984 to attend

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...

. He earned a BS in mechanical engineering (1984-1988) and an MS in manufacturing systems engineering (1988-1989) from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

. Volpi began his career at

Hewlett Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...

's optoelectronics division in 1989 where he was both in engineering and marketing. While at HP, he met his future wife Toni C. Cupal.Mike Volpi
nndb.com He returned to Stanford to earn an

M.B.A. A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as account ...

from the Graduate School of Business (1992-1994).

Cisco

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 technology

mergers and acquisitions Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...

. he was promoted to the chief strategy office working for CEO John Chambers until 2000. Some press speculated he was

heir apparent An heir apparent, often shortened to heir, is a person who is first in an order of succession and cannot be displaced from inheriting by the birth of another person; a person who is first in the order of succession but can be displaced by the b ...

to Chambers.Mike Volpi's trek from Cisco to Joost - CNET News
/ref> 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. During this time Cisco's first

Carrier Routing System Carrier Routing System (CRS) is a modular and distributed core router developed by Cisco Systems Inc that enables service providers to deliver data, voice, and video services over a scalable IP Next-Generation Network (NGN) infrastructure. In a ne ...

product was announced, the CRS-1, in 2004.

Entrepreneur

After Cisco in 2007 he became

entrepreneur in residence An Entrepreneur in residence, or Executive in residence (EIR), is a position most often held by successful entrepreneurs in venture capital firms, private equity firms, startup accelerators, law firms or business schools. The EIR typically lead ...

(EIR) at

Sequoia Capital Sequoia Capital is an American venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, and specializes in seed stage, early stage, and growth stage investments in private companies across technology sectors. , Sequoia's total a ...

. A few months later, he was appointed CEO of

Joost Joost () was an Internet TV service, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa). During 2007–2008 Joost used peer-to-peer TV (P2PTV) technology to distribute content to their Mozilla-based desktop player; in la ...

,Former Joost CEO Mike Volpi Jumps to Index Ventures — Tech News and Analysis
/ref> an Internet startup focused on online TV which was founded by

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In September 2009, a lawsuit was filed against Volpi by Skype’s founders in conjunction with the proposed divestiture of Skype from eBay. The lawsuit was dropped in November 2009.

Index Ventures

At Index Ventures, Volpi invests in early-stage companies, primarily across

autonomous driving A self-driving car, also known as an autonomous car, driver-less car, or robotic car (robo-car), is a car that is capable of traveling without human input.Xie, S.; Hu, J.; Bhowmick, P.; Ding, Z.; Arvin, F.,Distributed Motion Planning for Sa ...

, enterprise and

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

. Volpi has served on the boards of Index portfolio companies Big Switch Networks,

Blue Bottle Coffee Blue Bottle Coffee, Inc., is a coffee roaster and retailer once headquartered in Oakland, California, United States. In 2017, a majority stake in the company was acquired by Nestlé (68%). It is considered a major player in third wave coffee. T ...

(acquired by Nestle), Confluent Software, Elastic,

Hortonworks Hortonworks was a data software company based in Santa Clara, California that developed and supported open-source software (primarily around Apache Hadoop) designed to manage big data and associated processing. Hortonworks software was used to b ...

, Lookout,

Pure Storage Pure Storage is an American publicly traded technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States. It develops all-flash data storage hardware and software products. Pure Storage was founded in 2009 and developed its product ...

Sonos SONOS, short for "silicon–oxide–nitride–oxide–silicon", more precisely, " polycrystalline silicon"—"silicon dioxide"—"silicon nitride"—"silicon dioxide"—"silicon", is a cross sectional structure of MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconduc ...

, Ubiquity6, and

Zuora Zuora is an American enterprise software company headquartered in Redwood City, California that creates and provides software for businesses to launch and manage their subscription-based services. Zuora's applications are designed to automate re ...

. During Volpi's time at Index, the grew its office in

to an equal presence on both sides of the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. From 2012 to 2018, the firm had six

initial public offerings An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

in the US, including

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropb ...

Etsy Etsy, Inc. is an American e-commerce company focused on handmade or vintage items and craft supplies. These items fall under a wide range of categories, including jewelry, bags, clothing, home décor and furniture, toys, art, as well as craft su ...

and

, and has invested in early rounds of companies including self-driving car startup Aurora,

Bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

and Robinhood.

Other activity

Volpi is a non-executive board member of

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles Fiat Chrysler Automobiles N.V. (FCA) was an Italian-American multinational corporation primarily known as a manufacturer of automobiles, commercial vehicles, auto parts and production systems. The Italian holding company Exor was the largest ...

, an independent director of European investment firm Exor, and was a board member of Swedish mobile giant

Ericsson (lit. "Telephone Stock Company of LM Ericsson"), commonly known as Ericsson, is a Swedish multinational networking and telecommunications company headquartered in Stockholm. The company sells infrastructure, software, and services in informat ...

from 2010 to 2013. He served on the board(s) of

Opsware Opsware, Inc. was a software company based in Sunnyvale, California, that offered products for server and network device provisioning, configuration, and management targeted toward enterprise customers. Opsware had offices in New York City, Redm ...

(now HP),

TIBCO Software TIBCO Software Inc. is an American business intelligence software company founded in 1997 in Palo Alto, California. It has headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and offices in North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and South A ...

, StorSimple, Cloud.com, and

Clearwire Clearwire Corporation (stylized as clearw˙re) was a telecommunications operator which provided mobile and fixed wireless broadband communications services to retail and wholesale customers in the United States, Belgium, Ireland and Spain. Clearw ...

. Volpi serves sits on the board of Castilleja School, an independent school for girls grades six through twelve in

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was estab ...

, California, and is a Global Advisory Board Member at

Knight-Hennessy Scholars Knight-Hennessy Scholars is an international graduate-level scholarship program for study at Stanford University. Established in 2016, the program prepares students to take leadership roles in finding creative solutions to complex global issues. ...

, an international graduate-level scholarship program for study at

. He served on the board of

Witness In law, a witness is someone who has knowledge about a matter, whether they have sensed it or are testifying on another witnesses' behalf. In law a witness is someone who, either voluntarily or under compulsion, provides testimonial evidence, e ...

, a non-profit organization that uses video to find

human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...

violations, and on the advisory council for the

Stanford University Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business (also known as Stanford GSB) is the graduate business school of Stanford University, a private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective business sc ...

Personal life

Volpi is trilingual, and married with 2 children. His father is Vittorio Volpi, an executive at the

United Bank of Switzerland UBS Group AG is a multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company founded and based in Switzerland. Co-headquartered in the cities of Zürich and Basel, it maintains a presence in all major financial centres ...

Awards

*''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also re ...

Midas List The ''Forbes'' Midas list is the annual ranking by ''Forbes'' magazine of the most influential and best-performing venture capital investors. Described by Kara Swisher as the "Oscars for venture capitalists in tech," the Midas List uses parameter ...

: World's Smartest Tech Investors, 2015 * ''

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and editorially independent of the university. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "The" in ...

'' -

Innovators Under 35 The Innovators Under 35 is a peer-reviewed annual award and listicle published by ''MIT Technology Review'' magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. at ''Technology Review'' with lists of winners at technologyreview.com ...

, 1999 * ''

Network World International Data Group (IDG, Inc.) is a market intelligence and demand generation company focused on the technology industry. IDG, Inc.’s mission is centered around supporting the technology industry through research, data, marketing technol ...

'': 1999 Power Issue – 25 Most Powerful People in NetworkingMike Volpi, 12/27/99
, ''

'' * ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

and CB Insights' 2018 list of the top 100 venture capitalists worldwide featured Volpi at number 34.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Volpi, Mike American venture capitalists 1966 births Living people Cisco people Italian emigrants to the United States Hewlett-Packard people Business and industry award recipients Stanford Graduate School of Business alumni Stanford University School of Engineering alumni