Announcing the Lightspeed Enterprise CEO Advisory Council.

Lightspeed has a long history — twenty years to be exact — of working with high-ambition, visionary founders, and proven CEOs and operators who have experience in rapidly scaling companies and asserting market leadership.

Within this curated community, we’ve been able to help facilitate successful partnerships that range from advisory roles and board memberships to close mentorship and operating partnerships. The combination can often result in building “category winner” companies, and there are many examples of companies born out of the tight-knit Lightspeed enterprise community throughout the valley.

Today, we are formalizing what we are already doing around mentorship and partnership within our Lightspeed founder community by launching the Lightspeed Enterprise CEO Advisory Council and highlighting a small group of proven enterprise CEOs and operating executives who have worked closely with the firm over the years and have direct experience partnering with Lightspeed-backed founders.

The council will advise Lightspeed, as well as be a resource for our founders on how different types of partnerships can work — from operations within portfolio companies, to board construction and dynamics and more.

The CEOs who will be inaugural members of Lightspeed’s advisory council are David Wadhwani, CEO of AppDynamics (backed by Lightspeed and acquired by Cisco), Greg Schott, CEO of MuleSoft (backed by Lightspeed and acquired by Salesforce after going public), John W. Thompson (Chairman of Microsoft Board and Lightspeed Venture Partner) and Bipul Sinha (CEO of Rubrik and Lightspeed Venture Partner).

Lightspeed has enjoyed engaging with all four of these incredible leaders in a direct, deep working relationship over the years, and we are confident in each of their ability to serve as a credible resource for founders who will work with Lightspeed moving forward in their role as members of the advisory council. Some more history on our relationship with each of these distinguished leaders…

Our ties to David Wadhwani go back to AppDynamics — we recruited David Wadhwani to partner with founder Jyoti Bansal, where he served as the company’s CEO for the past four years, initially working to help the company become operationally ready for its IPO, and establishing plans for growth as a public company and later as the internal CEO of the company after its acquisition by Cisco. David has always been very involved as an advisor in the enterprise founder ecosystem — in addition to joining the Lightspeed council today, David is joining Greylock Partners as a Venture Partner today, a firm we collaborate with frequently and have worked side by side with in support of best-in-class enterprise companies and founders. We look forward to continuing our work with him as he joins the advisory council.

At MuleSoft, we recruited Greg Schott to partner with the early team and help them transform into a multi-billion dollar SaaS company. Over more than a decade, MuleSoft grew from 20 people into a public company with hundreds of millions in revenue.

John W. Thompson, Microsoft Chairman and Venture Partner at Lightspeed, has worked closely as an advisor and board member to Rubrik founder and CEO Bipul Sinha since its founding five years ago, and also serves as a mentor, board member and advisor to eight other Lightspeed companies.

And Bipul Sinha, a Venture Partner at Lightspeed and the co-founder and CEO of Rubrik, has been a VC, a startup co-founder and a CEO and currently works closely with several Lightspeed-backed founders including Abhijit Gosh of Confluera where he has served as executive chairman for the past 2 years.

We’re thankful to David, John, Greg and Bipul for their dedication to the Lightspeed platform and being generous with their time and expertise to help us build enduring enterprise companies. Join us in congratulating them on their appointment to the Lightspeed Enterprise CEO Advisory Council.

— Ravi Mhatre, Partner, Lightspeed