Steven Vassallo — General Partner and Director at Autogrid

Mr. Steven Vassallo, also known as Steve, has been a General Partner of Foundation Capital since 2011. Mr. Vassallo joined Foundation Capital as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence in 2007. He focuses on new opportunities in the areas of cleantech, consumer and software and services. He serves as a General Partner at Autogrid Systems, Inc. He also serves as an Advisor to the Aquaya Institute. He helped launch Ning, Inc., from 2004 to 2006. Mr. Vassallo served as Vice President of Product and Engineering at Ning. As a Member of the Founding Management Team, he led all product development from initial concept to a massively scalable platform. Prior to that, he served with several alternative energy startups including an independent project with Bloom Energy. Prior to this, he served as a Senior Director of Mechanical Engineering at Immersion. Prior to that, he served as a Director of Engineering at Immersion Corporation, from 1999 to 2002. Previously, he served as a Project Leader and Design Engineer at IDEO, where Mr. Vassallo developed more than a dozen successful products including Cisco's 7900 family of VoIP phones, BMW, Steelcase, McDonalds Nike sunglasses, Vecta KART chair and Caterpillar steering and transmission controls. He has been a Director of ForUsAll, Inc. He has been an Outside Director of SunRun Inc. since October 2009 and serves as its Lead Independent Director. He serves as a Director of Mode Analytics, Inc. He has been an Independent Director of CarSavvy, Inc. since October 6, 2014. He serves as a Director of Airy Labs, Akiban, PrivateCore, Bolt Threads, Inc., Autogrid Systems, Inc., Pocket, Beepi, Aquion Energy, Inc., and Sentient Energy. He served as a Director of Control4 Corporation from March 2011 to April 28, 2015. Mr. Vassallo also serves on the Board of the Nueva School and advises the Aquaya Institute. He has over 77 patents and has received numerous product and design awards including Business Week Design of the Decade Bronze Award, red dot 2009, IDEA99 Gold and Bronze Awards, Mode Analytics, Inc., NeoCon Gold and Most Innovative New Product Awards. He served 14 years in launching and building a broad array of successful companies and products. He has an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where Mr. Vassallo was an Arjay Miller Scholar, M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute.