Igor Sill

Current

• Managing Director & Founder at Geneva Venture Partners
• Chairman at Geneva Group International, Inc.

Past

• Vice President, WW Sales at Visual Engineering
• National Sales Director at Ingres Corporation
• Branch Manager at Exxon Information Systems

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Education

• University of Oxford - Said Business School
• Stanford University Graduate School of Business
• University of California, Berkeley

• Harvard Business School

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1 more...

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Venture Capital & Private Equity

Igor Sill’s Summary

In depth operational experience raising, investing and managing venture capital funds. Active in post investment value creation focusing on the underlying fundamentals, CEO recruitment, leveraged buy-outs, M&A, special situations, advisory services, turn-arounds, international technology companies, asset sales, active board participant, and business angel. Engaged in active Federal Systems advisory specifically in the technology field.

Specialties:
Portfolio creation and management for corporate and institutional investors targeting and supporting the most promising entrepreneurs. Interest in furthering security, authentication, intrusion, biometrics, nanotechnology, specifically, new and innovative approaches. Advisory work with Federal Systems agencies, Federal agency CIOs, top tiered Systems Integrators.

Technological innovation and entrepreneurship remains the driving force behind economic growth and rising incomes. Implementing governmental mandates which boost innovation, increase efficiencies, productivity and generates jobs is the key to guaranteeing the US economy’s rebound and long-term success. One of the top economic policy priorities for the Obama administration should be the focus on technology innovation and the spirit of entrepreneurship.

"No investment prospect ever needs to be a 100% probability, but the upside always has to outweigh the risk exponentially." Robert Rubin, Goldman Sachs

Igor Sill’s Specialties:

SaaS, On Demand, Hosted, Embedded Systems, OpenSource, Nanotechnology, Biometrics, Cybersecurity, Cyberdefense, Cryptography, SHA-2, Network Security & Multi-factor Authentication software, migration tools, Enterprise software. Fund syndications, Board of Directors, CEO, Advisory Board and executive team formation. Federal Systems procurement facilitation.

Igor Sill’s Experience

• Managing Director & Founder

  Geneva Venture Partners

  (Venture Capital & Private Equity industry)

  January 1997 — Present (12 years 11 months)

  GVP is backed by numerous institutional, fund of funds, family office investors and focuses its investment program on early-stage software-as-a-service, on demand, enterprise software, telecommunications, IT, wireless, security and internet segments. GVP was the initial seed investor in Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM), Zantaz (Autonomy), Callixa (SAP), Encirq, Softcoin, Karna, Tradec, NetXen.

• Chairman

  Geneva Group International, Inc.

  (Investment Management industry)

  December 1983 — Present (26 years )

  GenevaGroup specializes in providing professional services to the software industry. Services include executive search for CEO, BoDs and key officers, M&A sell-side advisory services, European and Asia Pacific business development services and interim CEO services. Completed over 1650 assignments with such clients as HP, Oracle (6 years working directly for Larry Ellison co-founder), SAP, Sybase, Siebel Systems (seed investor with Tom Siebel), Salesforce.com (seed investor with Marc Benioff), MySQL (with Marten Mickos, CEO), Business Objects (with Bernard Liautaud, founder), Actuate, Coupa, Exalead, Successfactors, Spring, Jaspersoft, Weblogic (BEA), Microsoft, SUN Microsystems, NetObjects (IBM), NetSuite (worked directly with Evan Goldberg and Larry Ellison) Cloudscape (IBM), Informix (IBM), Callixa (SAP), Red Hat Software, GigaNet (Emulex), Encirq, Business Signatures (Entrust), SpringCM, Threatmetrix, Tumbleweed, Gomez, ProofPoint, Polaris Wireless to name a few.

• Vice President, WW Sales

  Visual Engineering

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; VI; Computer Software industry)

  January 1982 — December 1983 (2 years )

  VP Sales for this San Jose, CA based 3D graphics virtualization software development company. Products were integrated into, then sold as IBM, Oracle, Autodesk and Ingres' 3D rendering graphics UNIX products. Worked directly for company founder and CEO, Bill Elmore, now with Foundation Capital.

• National Sales Director

  Ingres Corporation

  (Public Company; 51-200 employees; Computer Software industry)

  January 1981 — December 1981 (1 year )

  Hired by Ingres' founders Jon Nackerud, Michael Stonebraker, Eugene Wong to establish a global sales organization for this new relational database software company, based in Berkeley, CA. Investors included Bill Draper, then with Sutter Hill Ventures and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe. Reported to CEO Jon Nackerud. Ingres was acquired by ASK, then Computer Associates, and recently spun out as an independent open source company.

• Branch Manager

  Exxon Information Systems

  (Computer Hardware industry)

  January 1975 — December 1980 (6 years )

  Exxon Enterprises' invested in 4 new technology startups, Vydec, Qwip, Qyx, Zilog, all of which evolved into formidable market leaders as Exxon Information Systems with annual sales in excess of $500M competing against IBM, Xerox and Wang Laboratories. Managed field sales, support, finance and operations for the combined Qyx, Qwip, Vydec branch operations in San Francisco Bay Area w/ responsibility for over 200 employees. Initially joined as Sales Rep, then promoted to Sales Manager, Regional Sales Manager, then Branch Manager, Michigan, then Branch Manager Qyx San Francisco, then Branch Manager for the combined companies. Reported to James E. Hughes.

Igor Sill’s Education

• University of Oxford - Said Business School

  MBA , Economics, International Monetary systems , 2003 — 2005

  Activities and Societies:

  Merton College fellow
  Royal Economics Society member
  Oxford Society member
  OBA member

• Stanford University Graduate School of Business

  Advanced Management College 1984 — 1984

• University of California, Berkeley

  Political Science, Economics 1973 — 1975

• Harvard Business School

  Certificate , Venture Capital Program , 1991

  Josh Lerner, Paul Gompers

  Activities and Societies:

  Venture Capital & Private Equity

Additional Information

Igor Sill’s Interests:

Emerging clean technologies Innovative technologies in water, air, energy, green materials

Igor Sill’s Groups:

American Society for Enology and Viticulture
Association of Science-Technology Centres
California Enological Research Association
CHP 11-99 Foundation
Economics Club of San Francisco
Federation of American Scientists
Global Petroleum Group
Global Security Professionals
Heritage Foundation
International Myeloma Foundation (IMF)
Merton College Alumni Group, University of Oxford
NVCA
OPEC
Petroleum IT Professionals
Red Herring Limited
Royal Economic Society
Oxford Business School Alumni (OBA)
Oxford University Society (OUS)
Surveillance Technology
Union of Concerned Scientists
Young Americas Foundation - Reagan Ranch
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI)
World Affairs Council
WRHambrecht+Co

•    Oxford Business Alumni
•    Global Petroleum Group
•    Black Hat
•    Private Equity and Venture Capital Group
•    Siebel Community
•    SAMBA Swiss Association of MBAs - Members Only
•    Lusofonia - Unir os Falantes de Português
•    Harvard University Alumni
•    Family Offices Group
•    Goldman Sachs Networking
•    Venture Capital
•    ExxonMobil - Exxon Office Systems alumni
•    Ingres alumni
•    Sovereign Wealth Group
•    Global Security Professional
•    Green & Sustainability Innovators & Innovation Network
•    International Myeloma Foundation
•    Merton College, University of Oxford
•    SecurityMetrics
•    The Cuban Connection
•    Ex-Ingres
•    Green
•    Cal Alumni Association | UC Berkeley
•    Silicon Valley Venture Community
•    Petroleum Technology Transfer Council
•    CIS Investment Banking and Private Equity
•    Wine2.0
•    Gulf of Mexico (GOM) Exploration and Production
•    Defense Industry Network
•    Surveillance Technology
•    Hedge Fund Investors Group
•    Venture Capital Group
•    Oxford University Alumni
•    The Heritage Foundation
•    Southern California Dealmakers Network
•    University of Oxford - Saïd Business School
•    California Enological Research Association
•    Federation of American Scientists (FAS)
•    Green Templeton College, University of Oxford
•    Petroleum I.T. Professionals
•    Oxford University Society Northern California Branch
•    European Entrepreneurship & Innovation @ Silicon Valley
•    Friends of DARPA
•    CHP 11-99 Foundation
•    American Society for Enology and Viticulture (Friends and Members)
•    CYBER SECURITY Forum Initiative - CSFI
•    Wine and Technology

Igor Sill’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• reference requests
• getting back in touch