Background
Volpi was born in Milan, Italy.
Volpi was born in Milan, Italy.
And an Master of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (1992-1994). He returned to Stanford for an Master of Business Administration from the Graduate School of Business (1992-1994).
He then became SVP of the Routing and Service Provider Technology Group, where he managed over 5,000 engineers. In early 2007 this was an $11 billion business for He was considered the right-hand man and successor of Chief Executive Officer John Chambers. In 2007 he left and became EIR at Sequoia Capital.
A few months later, he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Joost.
In 2009 he became General Partner at When he was five, his family moved to Tokyo, Japan, where he lived until he moved to the United States in 1984. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (1984-1988) and an Mississippi in Manufacturing Systems Engineering (1988-1989) from Stanford University.
Volpi began his career at Hewlett Packard"s optoelectronics division in 1989 where he was both in engineering and in marketing. Volpi joined Systems in 1994 in the nascent business development group.
He was promoted to leading acquisitions at starting in April 1996.
As Chief Strategy Officer for the company he led corporate strategy, business development, and strategic alliances. During his tenure, he and his team were responsible for the acquisition of over 70 companies in 7 years, including a nearly $7B acquisition of Scientific Atlanta. Their acquisition strategy is widely regarded as a model for tech mergers and acquisitions.
In 1999, he was named to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35. he was promoted to the chief strategy office working for Chief Executive Officer John Chambers until 2000.
Some press speculated he was heir apparent to Chambers. During this time "s first Carrier Routing System product was announced, the Congressional Research Service-1, in 2004.
From 2007 until 2009, Volpi was Chief Executive Officer of Joost, an Internet startup focused on online television which was founded by Skype founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis. In September 2009, a lawsuit was filed against Volpi by Skype’s founders in conjunction with the proposed divestiture of Skype from eBay.
The lawsuit was dropped in November 2009.
At, Volpi invests in early stage companies across the Internet, telecom, networking and media sectors. He currently sits on the boards of Lookout, Path, SoundCloud, Big Switch Networks, Centrify, Hortonworks, Zuora, ElasticSearch, Fuzebox and Pure Storage. Volpi also contributes to the firm’s late stage growth fund through his investment in Sonos.
In addition he previously served on the board(s) of Opsware (now Himachal Pradesh), TIBCO, Skype, Storsimple, Cloud.com and Clearwire.
Volpi currently serves on the board of Witness, a non-profit organization which uses video to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. He previously served on the Advisory Council for the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Volpi is an independent director of Exor (company) and was a board member of Swedish mobile giant Ericsson between 2010 and 2013.
