Peter Solvik

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Peter Solvik is an American venture capitalist in technology companies. He was formerly a chief information officer at Cisco Systems, Inc. [1]

Contents

Education

Solvik got his undergraduate degree in 1980 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the school's first graduate with a dual degree in business and computer science. [2]

Career

Information technology

After graduating, Solvik joined Texas Instruments, and moved to Apple as the personal computing sector took off, where he ran its AppleLink group. [2] [3] After 11 years at Apple, he served as Senior Vice President and CIO of Cisco Systems, Inc. from 1993 until 2002. [4] [5] [6] [7] While at Cisco, Solvik was an executive sponsor of internal initiatives such as the creation of Status Agent, which allowed customers to track the status of their own orders online. [8] He was instrumental in Cisco's acquisition of over 100 companies, [4] including Calico Technology. [8]

In August 2000, BusinessWeek recognized Solvik as a "standout" CIO for his leadership of Cisco's e-sales and supply chain management initiatives, which had resulted in a reduction of $1.5 billion in costs by using Internet technologies across a wide range of areas, including human resources and manufacturing. [9] In December 2000, Network World named him one of its "25 most powerful people in networking". [10] That same year, B to B magazine named him one of its "Top 25 E-Champions". [11]

Venture capital

Solvik is co-founder and Managing Director of Jackson Square Ventures (fka Sigma West), a venture capital firm focused on B2B SaaS and Marketplaces. [12] Previously, he was a Managing Director at Sigma Partners, which he joined in 2002. Prior to Sigma, he also served on the Board of Directors of myCFO.

Solvik's successful investments include DocuSign; his fund's $17.5 million investment in that company was valued at $687 million when the company when public in 2018. [1]

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References

  1. 1 2 "DocuSign's biggest backer turned $17.5 million into $687 million". Los Angeles Times. Bloomberg. April 27, 2018. Retrieved March 5, 2023.
  2. 1 2 Goff, Leslie (May 8, 2000). "Many Paths". Computerworld. IDG Enterprise.
  3. ↑ Cone, Edward (5 November 2005). Ex-CIO Spends Venture Capital on More Than Just Tech, CIO Insight
  4. 1 2 Haggin, Patience (27 March 2017). Jackson Square’s Pete Solvik on M&A and Big-Company Disruption, The Wall Street Journal
  5. ↑ Matson, Eric (28 February 1997). Two Billion Reasons Cisco's Sold on the Net, Fast Company
  6. ↑ Wilder, Clinton, and Angus, Jeff (July 21, 1997). Pace of Change: Faster Than The Speed of Data, Information Week
  7. ↑ Burke, Stephen (29 December 1999). An Interview With Peter Slovik - Cisco, CRN
  8. 1 2 Tully, Shawn (August 17, 1988). "How Cisco Mastered the Net". Fortune. Retrieved March 5, 2023– via EBSCOHost.
  9. ↑ Reinhardt, Andy (August 28, 2000). "From Gearhead to Grand High Pooh-Bah". BusinessWeek. pp. 129–130. Retrieved March 5, 2023– via EBSCOHost.
  10. ↑ Born, Julie and Jim Duffy. (December 25, 2000). 25 most powerful people in networking. Archived 2008-03-17 at the Wayback Machine networkworld.com Retrieved 01-Mar-08.
  11. ↑ "Top 25 E-Champions: Peter Solvik." B to B (March 27, 2000). Abstract.
  12. ↑ Digital Fuel board profile

Further reading


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