Russell Siegelman

Teaching Statement

Russell Siegelman draws from seven years of high tech experience at Microsoft, his eleven years as a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) and his many years in non-profit board service to help his students experience the art and science of evaluating and pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities. His goal is that he and his students both learn and have fun while working on entrepreneurial projects that they are passionate about, whether they be for-profit or social ventures. His current and on-going activity as an angel investor and board member keeps him in touch with the entrepreneurial and investing for-profit and non-profit sectors. He brings this real-world knowledge and practical approach to developing business and social ventures.

Bio

Russell Siegelman has spent over twenty years in business and technology as a manager, investor and director.  Currently he is splitting his time between teaching, angel investing, and non-profit activities.  

As a Lecturer at Stanford Business School he teaches Startup Garage, Product Launch, and Starting and Growing a Social Venture.  In 2016-17 he will be teaching Startup garage in the Fall and Winter. He will also be teaching, Starting and Growing a Social Venture, a course he co-developed, in the Winter Quarter of 2017, as well as teaching Product Launch with Professor Jonathan Levav in the Spring Quarter.  Russell is a mentor and adviser to many GSB entrepreneurs.

In the social sector, he is the Chairman of the Board of the Global Innovation Fund (www.globalinnovation.fund), a $200M impact investment fund that backs social entrepreneurs around the world that addresses development challenges through innovations that have been shown to work.  Previously he was a board member of Innovations for Poverty Action, and is an active donor of the Jamal Poverty Action Lab at MIT. He also served on the Advisory Board of USAIDs Global Development Lab.  Previously he served on the board of the Positive Coaching Alliance, the Nueva School, the Lucille Packard Foundation for Children’s Health, and was the Chairman of the Board at Sustainable Conservation.

Russell has made personal investments in over fifty technology start-ups in his 20 years in Silicon Valley. 

Starting in 1996, Russell spent eleven years as a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, where he invested in consumer and technology related technologies and markets, including software, electronic commerce, Web services, semiconductors, mobile systems, media and telecommunications. He continues to serve on the boards of several KPCB companies.

Russell joined KPCB after seven years at Microsoft. At Microsoft he helped launch several networking and Windows products. Later he worked directly for Bill Gates, resulting in the formation the Microsoft Network (MSN), Microsoft’s online service. Russell became the first employee of this division and its General Manager and then Vice President. Under his direction, MSN was developed and launched and reached over one million paying members. Russell was also responsible for the formation of the Slate project, Microsoft’s World Wide Web political and arts commentary. He recruited the editor, Michael Kinsley, and was the business manager in charge of Slate until he left Microsoft in July 1996.

Before Microsoft, Russell was a software engineer who wrote artificial intelligence applications for the financial services industry at Applied Expert Systems, a Cambridge Massachusetts startup, and was also an engineering consultant. He earned his BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Physics in 1984 and an MBA from Harvard University where he was a Baker Scholar in 1989.

Academic Degrees

• BS in Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1984
• MBA (Baker Scholar), Harvard University, 1989

Awards and Honors

• MBA Class of '73 Lecturer for 2012-2013

Teaching

Degree Courses

2017-18

MKTG 535: Product Launch

Our focus is on the question, "When launching a product, what are the framing issues that will help determine success?" In particular, we will provide you with tools to analyze market situations and determine whether it makes sense to launch a...

STRAMGT 325: Starting and Growing a Social Venture

This course is for students who may want to undertake an entrepreneurial career by starting and/or managing a social venture. It covers traditional topics in starting and growing a venture - venture creation, resource acquisition, managing...

STRAMGT 356: The Startup Garage: Design

Startup Garage is an intensive hands-on, project-based course, in which students will apply the concepts of design thinking, engineering, finance, business and organizational skills to design and test new business concepts that address real world...

STRAMGT 366: The Startup Garage: Testing and Launch

Teams that concluded at the end of the fall quarter that their preliminary product or service and business model suggest a path to viability, continue with the winter quarter course. In this course, the teams develop more elaborate versions of...

2016-17

MKTG 535: Product Launch

Our focus is on the question, "When launching a product, what are the framing issues that will help determine success?" In particular, we will provide you with tools to analyze market situations and determine whether it makes sense to launch a...

STRAMGT 325: Starting and Growing a Social Venture

This course is for students who may want to undertake an entrepreneurial career by starting and/or joining the senior management team of a social venture. It covers all phases of a venture - ideation and venture creation, resource acquisition,...

STRAMGT 356: The Startup Garage: Design

Startup Garage is an intensive hands-on, project-based course, in which students will apply the concepts of design thinking, engineering, finance, business and organizational skills to design and test new business concepts that address real world...

STRAMGT 366: The Startup Garage: Testing and Launch

Teams that concluded at the end of the fall quarter that their preliminary product or service and business model suggest a path to viability, continue with the winter quarter course. In this course, the teams develop more elaborate versions of...