Steve Vassallo
Principal, Foundation Capital
http://www.foundationcapital.com

Presenter

Session 7: Technology Incubation and Clean Tech Investments
Monday, October, 27, 2008

Steve Vassallo is a Principal at Foundation Capital where he focuses on new opportunities in Cleantech. An entrepreneur who lives at the intersection of business, technology, and design, Steve has spent the last 13 years launching and building a broad array of successful companies and products. He is currently serving on the board of directors for SunRun.

Prior to joining Foundation in 2007, Steve was VP of Product and Engineering at Ning, a consumer Internet company focused on fast and free creation of social Web applications. As a member of the founding management team, Steve led all product development from initial concept to a massively scalable platform. Prior to Ning, Steve worked with several alternative energy startups including an independent project with Bloom Energy. Prior to this, Steve was Senior Director of Mechanical Engineering at Immersion [IMMR], a development and licensing firm that pioneered tactile feedback and human touch technology. Prior to Immersion, Steve was a project leader and design engineer at IDEO where he developed more than a dozen successful products including Cisco's 7900 family of VoIP phones, Nike sunglasses, Vecta KART chair, and Caterpillar steering and transmission controls.

Steve holds 19 patents and has received numerous product awards including Business Week Design of the Decade Bronze Award, IDEA99 Gold and Bronze Awards, NeoCon Gold and Most Innovative New Product Awards.

Steve earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.