John Hamm

Bio

John is an Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures. He has a diverse background as a technology CEO, venture investor, executive/CEO leadership advisor, and Board member of 25+ companies. John runs a global Executive Coaching practice for venture-backed technology companies, and has advised over 80 CEOs and many of their teams in the last 10 years on leadership practices, strategy, and executive team development. He is also a frequent speaker and facilitator for mid-large organizations and their executive development programs. John is author of the popular leadership book, Unusually Excellent (Wiley – 2010), and has written several papers, including “The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage” and “Why Entrepreneurs Don’t Scale”, which both ran in the Harvard Business Review. His papers have gone on to be used in more than a dozen MBA programs worldwide. John has also been published in Fast Company, Business 2.0, Fortune, and The Wall Street Journal. Earlier in his career John was CEO of PonoMusic, a project founded by Neil Young, dedicated to the quality of studio master music recordings. Prior, John served as CEO of Accept Software, which was acquired by Artemis, a Versata Company. John was also a Partner at TCG Advisors with Geoff Moore, and a venture partner at Redpoint Ventures. John has deep operational and leadership experience in high-growth companies, and has held senior positions at Whistle Communications as Adaptec, and Western Digital. He has been an investor and Board member at Brocade (NASDAQ:BRCD), Ironport (acquired by Cisco), Documentum (NASDAQ:DCTM – acquired by EMC), Solarflare (acquired by Xlinx), and Blue (acquired by Logitech). He currently serves on the Board of Directors for Torch.io and Nexant, both in San Francisco. John holds a Bachelor, Science degree with honors in Engineering from Purdue University – Engineering Physics and Engineering Management.