Mike Volpi is a venture capitalist and partner at Index Ventures

Index Ventures

Index Ventures is a venture capital investment firm based in Geneva, Switzerland, with offices in London, Jersey, and starting in 2011, Silcon Valley. The firm was founded in 1996 by Neil Rimer and Giuseppe Zocco. Since its inception, the firm has raised four main venture funds and a growth...

 which he joined in 2009. He is best known for his leadership of Cisco’s business development efforts during the company’s prominent growth era.

Career

Mike began his career at Hewlett Packard's optoelectronics division in 1989. He joined Cisco Systems in 1994 in the nascent business development group. He was rapidly promoted to Chief Strategy Officer for the company where he led corporate strategy, business development, and strategic alliances. During his tenure, he and his team were responsible for the acquisition of over 70 companies in 7 years. Their acquisition strategy is widely regarded as a model for tech M & A). Later, he also became General Manager for Cisco’s $10B+ Routing and Service Provider Business and re-established Cisco’s market leadership in Service Provider routing. In 1999, he was named to the MIT

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

 Technology Review

Technology Review

Technology Review is a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as "The Technology Review", and was re-launched without the "The" in its name on April 23, 1998 under then publisher R. Bruce Journey...

 TR100

TR35

The TR35 is an annual list published by MIT Technology Review magazine, naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.Some of the most famous winners of the award include Larry Page and Sergey Brin , Linus Torvalds , Jerry Yang , Jonathan Ive , Mark Zuckerberg...

 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.

From 2007 until 2009, Mike was CEO of Joost

Joost

Joost is an Internet TV service, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis . During 2007-8 Joost used peer-to-peer TV technology to distribute content to their Mozilla-based desktop player; in late 2008 this was migrated to use a Flash-based Web player instead.Joost began development in 2006...

, an Internet startup focused on online TV which was founded by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In September 2009, a lawsuit was filed against Mike 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, Mike invests in early stage companies across the Internet, telecom, networking and media sectors. He currently sits on the boards of Cloud.com

Cloud.com

Cloud.com is a venture-backed startup based out of Cupertino that develops an open source cloud orchestration software product for the implementation of public and private cloud computing environments. Their software, CloudStack, is designed to make it easier for Service Providers and Enterprises...

, Foodily, GroupSpaces, Lookout

Lookout

A lookout or look-out is a person on a ship in charge of the observation of the sea for hazards, other ships, land, etc. Lookouts report anything they see and or hear. When reporting contacts, lookouts give information such as, bearing of the object, which way the object is headed, target angles...

, Path

Path

Path, pathway or PATH may refer to:-Path:* Course , the intended path of a vehicle over the surface of the Earth* Trail, hiking trail, footpath, or bridle path...

, SoundCloud

SoundCloud

SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform which allows collaboration, promotion and distribution of audio recordings.-History:SoundCloud was originally started in Stockholm, Sweden, but was established in Berlin, Germany in August, 2007 by sound designer Alex Ljung and artist Eric Wahlforss...

 and Storsimple

StorSimple

StorSimple is a venture-backed privately-held company based in Santa Clara, CA, founded in 2009 by Ursheet Parikh and Guru Pangal. StorSimple's primary product is a data center storage device that enables I/T organizations to use public and private cloud storage as primary data storage...

. Mike also contributes to the firm’s late stage growth fund through his investment in Sonos

Sonos

Sonos is a consumer electronics company based in Santa Barbara, California. It was founded in 2002 by John MacFarlane, who previously founded Software.com. The company’s main product is the Sonos Multi-Room Music System.-History:...

.

Public Boards

Mike has been a board member of Swedish mobile giant Ericsson (ERIC) since 2010. In addition he previously served on the board(s) of Opsware (now HP), TIBCO and Clearwire.

He currently serves on the board of Witness, a non-profit organization which uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. Mike previously served on the Advisory Council for the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Education

He earned a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MS in Manufacturing Systems Engineering from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Personal life

Born in Italy, Mike was raised in Japan and moved to the United States in 1984. He is trilingual. Mike is married with 2 children.