Scott Weiss is an American

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 ha ...

at the

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Cou ...

firm

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 H ...

, joining in April 2011 as the firm's fourth general partner. A native of

Sarasota Sarasota () is a city in Sarasota County on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The area is renowned for its cultural and environmental amenities, beaches, resorts, and the Sarasota School of Architecture. The city is located in the sou ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and ...

, he founded and was CEO of IronPort Systems, which

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, ...

acquired in 2007 for $830 million.

Education

Weiss has a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

from the

University of Florida The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida, traces its origins to 1853, and has operated continuously on its ...

and an M.B.A. from

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA ...

Early career

Weiss was an associate at

McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...

and spent his first five years out of college at

Electronic Data Systems Electronic all cash BSN acc: 1311729000110205 Data Systems (EDS) was an American multinational information technology equipment and services company headquartered in Plano, Texas which was founded in 1962 by Ross Perot. The company was a s ...

. He then headed

MSN MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95. The Microsoft Net ...

business development at

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

and was employee no. 13 at

Hotmail Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, Calendaring software, calendaring, Address book, contacts, and Task management, tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smit ...

, an email provider that Microsoft acquired in 1998. At Hotmail, Weiss was responsible for partnership and revenue generating business development efforts. Prior to 2001, Weiss was the managing director and entrepreneur in residence at Idealab, a business incubator. Weiss was vice president and general manager of Cisco's Security Technology Group, a position he assumed following Cisco's acquisition of email appliance provider IronPort Systems. Weiss co-founded IronPort Systems in 2001 with

Scott Banister Scott Banister (born 1975) is an American entrepreneur, startup founder, and angel investor. He cofounded the anti-spam company IronPort, and he was an early advisor and board member at PayPal. He invented paid search advertising via keyword au ...

, with whom he had worked at

Idealab Idealab (formerly known as idealab!) is a startup studio based in Pasadena, California, U.S.A. History Idealab was founded by Bill T. Gross (not to be confused with the founder of PIMCO, Bill H. Gross) in March 1996. Prior to Idealab, Gross foun ...

. Over the next six years, IronPort Systems grew from two people into a company with 450 employees and a $200 million run rate.

Andreessen Horowitz

Whilst at Andreessen Horowitz, Weiss has blogged on such topics as corporate transparency for

All Things D AllThingsD.com was a US online publication that specialized in technology and startup company news, analysis and coverage. It was founded in 2007 by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg, as an extension of the annual meetings ''D: All Things Digital ...

and enterprise startup best practices for

GigaOM Gigaom is a technology focused analyst firm and media company. The company evolved from a blog which offered news, analysis, and opinions on startup companies, emerging technologies, and other technology related topics. It was started by Om Malik ...

. He serves on the boards of Distelli, Platfora, Silver Tail Systems, Bluebox, and Jumio as well as Skout, App.Net, and Return Path. Weiss is credited with bringing to the firm 360-degree feedback performance reviews of partners by other partners, venture firms and entrepreneurs of the companies in Andreessen Horowitz's portfolio. This type of performance review is an unusual practice for venture capital firms. Scott Weiss joined the Board of Directors of

Optimizely Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Optimizely provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities, as well as web content ma ...

as part of Andreesen Horowitz's Series B round in the company. Weiss was previously on the Board of Directors of Skout, the social mobile company that was sold in 2016 to The Meet Group.

Philanthropy

In April 2012, Weiss along with Andreessen Horowitz General Partners

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silico ...

Ben Horowitz Benjamin Abraham Horowitz (born June 13, 1966) is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder along with Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He previously co ...

, Jeff Jordan, John O’Farrell and Peter Levine pledged to give half of their lifetime income from venture capital to charity.

References

External links

Scott Weiss's Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Weiss, Scott Living people American computer businesspeople American venture capitalists American company founders Cisco people University of Florida alumni Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people) Harvard Business School alumni American philanthropists People from Sarasota, Florida Microsoft employees IronPort people Andreessen Horowitz