Endeavor

JOHN HAMM USA, Soda Rock Partners John Hamm's career spans 35 years in three areas of domain expertise - technology executive (CEO) leadership, venture capital investment, and advisory work with CEOs and Executive Teams. John is actively engaged with a diverse group of CEOs from a variety of market segments on matters of strategy, leadership, and managing teams, change, and growth. He has coached and advised over 70 CEOs in the last decade. Hamm is currently a Managing Partner at SodaRock Ventures and serves on the Boards of Directors of Nexant (San Francisco), Solarflare (Irvine), Blue Microphones (Los Angeles), and The Last Mile (San Francisco). As an early stage investor, John has a strong track record of successful technology start-ups, including Brocade Communications (IPO, NASDAQ:BRCD), Military Advantage and Affinity Labs (both acquired by Monster.com), Truveo (acquired by AOL), Webify (acquired by IBM) and IronPort Systems (acquired by Cisco). Prior, John was CEO of PonoMusic, a digital music company founded by musician Neil Young, focused on delivering studio-quality digital music content to music aficionados worldwide. PonoMusic is widely credited with driving the "quality" movement of digital music that has transformed the industry and also launched the Stereophile product of the year, 2015, The PonoPlayer. From May, 2011 to November, 2012, John served as CEO of Accept Software and guided Accept to an acquisition by Artemis. Prior, John was a Venture Partner at Redpoint Ventures in Menlo Park and a General Partner at VSP Capital in San Francisco, both technology venture capital investment firms. John was also a managing director with Geoff Moore at TCG, a leading technology & strategy advisory firm. Prior, John designed and led a CEO Leadership Boot Camp sponsored by Deloitte that reached over 600 entrepreneurs nationwide. John has excelled in leadership/operating roles at several high-growth companies, Including Whistle Communications, where he served four years as president and CEO. Backed by IVP and The Mayfield Fund, Whistle was acquired by IBM in June 1999. From 1990 to 1996, Hamm served as EVP and GM at Adaptec (NASDAQ:ADPT). Prior, he held executive positions at Western Digital both in the U.S. and Europe. John started his professional career at Hewlett-Packard. John served on the Faculty at The Leavy School of Business at Santa Clara University for five years, and taught both undergraduate and MBA classes in Business Leadership. In addition to his current release, Unusually Excellent, (Wiley – Jossey Bass, c 2010) Hamm has been published in Fast Company, Business 2.0, Business Week, Fortune, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. John's timeless article, The Five Messages Leaders Must Manage, was the lead feature in the May, 2006 issue of The Harvard Business Review. Prior, Hamm wrote Why Entrepreneurs Don't Scale, was published in The Harvard Business Review in December 2002, and is used in many MBA programs worldwide. John holds a Bachelor, Science degree in Engineering from Purdue University - Engineering Physics and Engineering Management.

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