Tim Guleri is an American venture capitalist and serial entrepreneur. He is the managing director of Sierra Ventures of San Mateo, California.[2][3][4][5] Prior to joining Sierra Ventures, Guleri helped build Scopus Technology[6] and founded Octane Software.[2][3][7]

Tim Guleri
Tim Guleri 2014
Education
Occupation(s)Managing director, Sierra Ventures[1]

Early life and education edit

Tim Guleri received his Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, India in 1986.[5][6] He received his master's degree in robotics and industrial engineering from Virginia Tech[8] in 1988[3] and was inducted into the Academy of Distinguished Alumni in 2006.[9] He sold books door to door to put himself through graduate school.[6]

Career edit

In September 1989, Guleri became part of the information technology team at LSI Logic Corporation.[2][3] In 1992, he joined Scopus Technology, a customer relationship management software company,[4] where he was vice president of field operations[5][8][10] until 1996.[2][3] Scopus went public in 1995, and was acquired by Seibel Systems in 1998 for $750 million.[8][11][12]

Guleri founded the ecommerce company Octane Software in 1997.[2][13] He was the CEO of Octane until it sold to Epiphany, Inc. in 2000 for $3.2 billion in stock.[4][10][14] Guleri led the merger of the two companies[5][8] and served as the executive vice president of Epiphany from March 2000 until February 2001.[2][3][6] He joined Sierra Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that is focused on enterprise technology,[15] as managing director of the software team in 2001.[4][5][6] At Sierra, Guleri worked with investments in software and open source development. Through his investments from Sierra, he has taken companies Sourcefire and MakeMyTrip public.[16] Other investments with notable exits include: Sourcefire (acquired by Cisco in for $2.7 billion),[17] Shape Security (acquired by F5 for $1 billion),[18] Treasure Data (acquired by Arm for $600 million),[19] and Greenplum (acquired by EMC for $400 million).[20]

Other investment activities edit

During his time at Sierra Ventures, Guleri has led investments and served on the board of directors for companies such as Again Technologies,[21] Approva,[7] BINA Technologies[22][23] CodeGreen Networks,[24] Greenplum,[25] Hired.com,[26] MakeMyTrip.com, an online flight booking service based in India,[7] Sourcefire,[7] and Ventaso, a business software company.[27] He currently sits on the board of directors for companies including Astronomer,[28] Fabric,[29] Phenom,[30] and Treasure Data.[31][32]

Philanthropy edit

In 2023, Guleri and his Alma mater, Punjab Engineering College, established the "Lt. Col. S.C.S Guleri and Shama Guleri 'Keep Rising' Merit Scholarship." The scholarship, named after Guleri's mother and late father, will fund the education of eight economically-disadvantaged students.[33]

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ Lizette Chapman (January 12, 2012). "VC Outlook: Sierra Ventures' Guleri On Selective Hyper-Growth". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "Aditya Tim Guleri". Bloomberg. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  3. ^ a b c d e f "Aditya Tim Guleri". 4-Traders. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c d Cromwell Schubarth (April 15, 2013). "Q&A: Sierra VC Tim Guleri on his firm's CIO advantage". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  5. ^ a b c d e "Tim Guleri Managing Director, Sierra Ventures". OReilly Media. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  6. ^ a b c d e Peter Delevett (July 5, 2013). "Elevator Pitch: Tim Guleri Of Sierra Ventures". SiliconBeat. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  7. ^ a b c d Jack M. Germain (January 29, 2010). "Startup, Know Thyself: Q&A With Sierra Ventures Managing Director Tim Guleri". ECommerce Times. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d "Tim Guleri". OReilly Media. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  9. ^ "Academy of Distinguished Alumni". Virginia Tech. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  10. ^ a b "Tim Guleri". TiE Silicon Valley. Archived from the original on February 24, 2015. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  11. ^ "Company News; Siebel to Acquire Scopus for $460 Million". The New York Times. March 3, 1998. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  12. ^ Cath Everett (March 3, 1998). "Siebel acquires Scopus for $460 million". V3.co.uk. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  13. ^ Mike Ricciuti (March 15, 2000). "E-commerce software firms combine in $3 billion deal". CNet. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  14. ^ "Company News: Epiphany is in $3.19 Billion Deal for Octane". The New York Times. March 16, 2000.
  15. ^ Marshall, Matt (June 28, 2023). "Sierra Ventures' Tim Guleri on generative AI: 'I've never been as excited and as scared in my 20 years of doing VC'". VentureBeat.
  16. ^ "Management Team". Foundation's Edge. Retrieved February 23, 2015.[dead link]
  17. ^ De La Merced, Michael (July 23, 2023). "Cisco to Buy Sourcefire, a Cybersecurity Company, for $2.7 Billion". The New York Times. Retrieved February 1, 2024.
  18. ^ Miller, Ron (December 20, 2019). "F5 acquires Shape Security for $1B". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 1, 2024.
  19. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (August 2, 2018). "Arm acquires data management service Treasure Data to bolster its IoT platform". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 1, 2024.
  20. ^ "Greenplum hires new CEO, raises $15 million". San Francisco Business Times. February 6, 2007. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  21. ^ "Again Technologies raises $9.3M". San Francisco Business Times. August 24, 2000. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  22. ^ Lisa Ward (March 21, 2013). "The Funded: BINA Technologies". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  23. ^ Rip Empson (March 25, 2013). "With $6.25M In Tow, Bina Technologies Wants To Bring Big Data Insight To Genomic Sequencing". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  24. ^ "Code Green Networks raises $15M". Silicon Valley Business Journal. January 30, 2006. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  25. ^ "Greenplum hires new CEO, raises $15 million". San Francisco Business Times. February 6, 2007. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  26. ^ Billy Gallagher (March 24, 2014). "Hired Raises $15M Series A At Valuation Around $60M". TechCrunch. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  27. ^ "Ventaso raises $20 million". San Francisco Business Times. August 6, 2001. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  28. ^ Enterprise cloud startup Astronomer raises $5.7M seed funding to make it easy to manage and scale Apache Airflow clusters in the cloud Tech Startups, 26 September 2019
  29. ^ Fabric Launches Headless Commerce Platform with $9.5 Million in Seed Funding To Help Grow D2C and B2B Brands Fabric Inc, 20 October 2020
  30. ^ Phenom People Ropes in $6 mln Venture Capital Journal, 20 October 2015
  31. ^ Derrick Harris (July 23, 2013). "Treasure Data raises $5M, fuses Hadoop and data warehouse in Amazon's cloud". GigaOm. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  32. ^ Cromwell Schubarth (July 24, 2013). "Jerry Yang-backed Treasure Data raises $5M". Silicon Valley Business Journal. Retrieved February 23, 2015.
  33. ^ "Punjab Engineering College, Chandigarh, Augments Educational Opportunities with a Generous Contribution from Esteemed Alumnus Tim Guleri". India News Calling. December 19, 2023. Retrieved February 1, 2024.