Pierluigi Zappacosta

Last updated
Pierluigi Zappacosta
Pierluigi Zappacosta.jpg
Zappacosta in 2008
Born (1950-07-02) July 2, 1950 (age 73)
Chieti, Italy
Alma mater Sapienza University of Rome (BSc.)
Stanford University (MSc.)
Occupation(s)Businessman, electrical engineer, investor
Known forbeing one of the three founders of Logitech
Children3, including Marco Zappacosta

Pierluigi Zappacosta (born Chieti, Italy, on July 2, 1950) is an Italian businessman, electrical engineer, and investor. He is the chairman of Faro Ventures. [1] He has co-founded, directed, and served on the boards of several prestigious companies, including Logitech and Sierra Sciences.

Contents

Career

In 1981, he co-founded the Swiss computer hardware manufacturer and software maker, Logitech [2] (Nasdaq: LOGI) together with Daniel Borel and Giacomo Marini, which went on to become the world's largest manufacturer of computer mice and other personal interface products. [3] Zappacosta served at Logitech for sixteen years, first as president and CEO and later as vice-chairman. [4] He was instrumental in taking the company public in Switzerland in 1988 and on NASDAQ in 1997, raising over $60 million. Whe he left Zappacosta in 1998, sales of Logitech had grown to over $400 million per year.

Zappacosta is also a venture partner with Noventi, [5] and served as CEO at Sierra Sciences, [6] and chairman at Digital Persona, Inc., a company offering software and hardware [7] for identification based on biometrics. [8] He is a member of the board of trustees of the Reason Foundation [9] and the Bruno Leoni Institute.

Education

He received his bachelor's degree ( laurea in electrical engineering) from the University of Rome in Italy, graduating cum laude . He later earned his master's degree in computer science from Stanford in 1978. [10]

Personal life

Zappacosta's son, Marco Zappacosta, is a technology entrepreneur who is known as the co-founder and CEO of the unicorn company Thumbtack. [11] [12]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer mouse</span> Pointing device used to control a computer

A computer mouse is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of the pointer on a display, which allows a smooth control of the graphical user interface of a computer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Logitech</span> Swiss multinational electronics and technology company

Logitech International S.A. is a Swiss company and a multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the company has offices throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, and is one of the world's leading manufacturers of input and interface devices for personal computers (PCs) and other digital products. It is a component of the flagship Swiss Market Index.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John L. Hennessy</span> American computer scientist

John Leroy Hennessy is an American computer scientist who serves as chairperson of Alphabet Inc. (Google). Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Technologies and Atheros while also serving as the tenth President of Stanford University. Hennessy announced that he would step down in the summer of 2016. He was succeeded as president by Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Marc Andreessen called him "the godfather of Silicon Valley."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Guerrino De Luca</span> Logitechs board of directors chairman

Guerrino De Luca is the chairman of Logitech's board of directors. He served as President and CEO from 1998 to 2008.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel Borel</span> Swiss businessman

Daniel Borel is a Swiss businessman and co-founder of technology firm Logitech.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanmina Corporation</span> American company

Sanmina Corporation is an American electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider headquartered in San Jose, California that serves original equipment manufacturers in communications and computer hardware fields. The firm has nearly 80 manufacturing sites, and is one of the world’s largest independent manufacturers of printed circuit boards and backplanes. As of 2022, it is ranked number 482 in the Fortune 500 list.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ed Zschau</span> American management consultant and politician

Edwin Van Wyck Zschau is an American educator who represented California's 12th District in the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1987. In 1986 he ran as the Republican candidate for a seat in the United States Senate. He prevailed in a crowded Republican primary that included, among others, conservative commentator Bruce Herschensohn, Los Angeles County supervisor Michael D. Antonovich and Congresswoman Bobbi Fiedler, but then lost to incumbent Democrat Alan Cranston by a narrow margin.

Giacomo Marini is an Italian businessman and engineer who is the founder and managing director at Noventi, an early-stage technology venture capital firm, based in Silicon Valley.

Avnet, Inc. is a distributor of electronic components headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, named after Charles Avnet, who founded the company in 1921. After its start on Manhattan's Radio Row, the company became incorporated in 1955 and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 1961. On May 8, 2018, Avnet changed stock markets to Nasdaq, trading under the same ticker AVT.

Dale Fuller is one of Silicon Valley’s first-generation software executives, entrepreneurs and developers. He took WhoWhere? Inc. public, led Apple’s PowerBook division to profitability and served as chief executive officer and president of Borland Software Corporation. Fuller is chairman and has served as president and chief executive officer at MokaFive Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Horowitz</span> American electrical engineer (1957–)

Mark A. Horowitz is an American electrical engineer, computer scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur who is the Yahoo! Founders Professor in the School of Engineering and the Fortinet Founders Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He holds a joint appointment in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments and previously served as the Chair of the Electrical Engineering department from 2008 to 2012. He is a co-founder, the former chairman, and the former chief scientist of Rambus Inc.. Horowitz has authored over 700 published conference and research papers and is among the most highly-cited computer architects of all time. He is a prolific inventor and holds 374 patents as of 2023.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sierra Sciences</span> Biotechnology company

Sierra Sciences, LLC is a biotechnology company founded by William H. Andrews, former director of molecular biology at Geron Corporation. Andrews founded Sierra Sciences in 1999 in Reno, Nevada with the goal of preventing and/or reversing cellular senescence, and ultimately curing diseases associated with human aging, including the aging process itself.

The Hive Group was a software company that applied visualization technology in operational intelligence (OI), business intelligence (BI), and complex event processing (CEP) contexts. The company primarily developed enterprise treemapping software used by major corporations and public agencies such as Intel Corporation, Procter & Gamble, Sun Microsystems, the United States Army, the United States Marine Corps, and the United States Coast Guard.

Charles Stanley "Herb" Kuta is an American electronics engineer and software engineer who was a co-founder of Silicon Graphics, a major graphics workstation manufacturer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kunle Olukotun</span> British-born Nigerian computer scientist

Oyekunle Ayinde "Kunle" Olukotun is a British-born Nigerian computer scientist who is the Cadence Design Systems Professor of the Stanford School of Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University and the director of the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Lab. Olukotun is known as the “father of the multi-core processor”, and the leader of the Stanford Hydra Chip Multiprocessor research project. Olukotun's achievements include designing the first general-purpose multi-core CPU, innovating single-chip multiprocessor and multi-threaded processor design, and pioneering multicore CPUs and GPUs, transactional memory technology and domain-specific languages programming models. Olukotun's research interests include computer architecture, parallel programming environments and scalable parallel systems, domain specific languages and high-level compilers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandra Kurtzig</span> American businesswoman and technology entrepreneur

Sandra L. Kurtzig is an American businesswoman and technology entrepreneur. She was one of Silicon Valley's first female entrepreneurs, and as the founder of the business and manufacturing software producer ASK Group in 1972, was the first woman to take a Silicon Valley technology company public.

Marco Zappacosta is an American businessman. He co-founded Thumbtack and serves as the company's CEO.

References

  1. ↑ "Pierluigi Zappacosta". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  2. ↑ "Leadership". CHM. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  3. ↑ "UPDATE 1-Logitech shares surge on talk of Microsoft bid". Reuters. 2008-01-11. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  4. ↑ "pierluigi zappacosta". web.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  5. ↑ http://www.noventivc.com/pierluigi_zappacosta.htm Archived 2013-10-13 at the Wayback Machine
  6. ↑ "SIERRA SCIENCES STAFF". Sierra Sciences. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  7. ↑ "DigitalPersona Inc - Company Profile and News". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  8. ↑ "Crossmatch is now HID Global". HID Global. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  9. ↑ Reason Foundation - Frequently Asked Questions Archived 2008-01-31 at the Wayback Machine
  10. ↑ "The Hive Group - Operational Treemaps". www.hivegroup.com. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
  11. ↑ Townsend, Tess (2015-09-30). "The CEO of the Latest Unicorn Can't Stand the Term 'Unicorn'". Inc.com. Retrieved 2021-08-21.
  12. ↑ "Italy Has Found a New Young Hero in Silicon Valley: Marco Zappacosta". SAN FRANCISCO, ITALY. Retrieved 2021-08-21.


This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.