Board of Directors

Guido Appenzeller

CEO / Co-Founder – Board Member
Guido is the Co-Founder and CEO of Big Switch Networks. Before co-founding Big Switch Networks, he was a Consulting Assistant Professor at Stanford University and head of the Clean Slate Lab where he led the research team that developed the OpenFlow v1.0 standard and the reference switch and controller implementations. Guido previously was CTO of Voltage Security, an enterprise software company that he co-founded and grew from zero to profitability and over 1000 Enterprise customers. He was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum and holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University and a MS in Physics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

Kyle Forster

Kyle Forster
President / Co-Founder – Board Member

Kyle spent most of his career at Cisco, initially as the technical assistant to SVP Mike Volpi and later as a Product Manager in the cellular and wifi business units. He launched three v1.0 products in wireless and security and finished his time there managing a ~$100 million portfolio of Cisco’s WLAN Controllers. In between Cisco and Big Switch Networks, he was VP of Product Management at Joost, a peer-to-peer TV-over-the-Internet company from the founders of Skype. He started his career at eBusiness consulting company Scient, first as a java developer and later engineering manager and co-founder of the wireless practice. He holds a BSE in Electrical Engineering from Princeton, a MS in Computer Science and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Tony Bates

Board Member

Tony Bates is president of the Skype Division of Microsoft. He is responsible for overseeing the company's direction, strategy and overall mission to become a global communications provider that will eventually reach billions of users. Before joining Skype, Bates was senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Enterprise, Commercial and Small Business Group. Prior to that, he was senior vice president and general manager for the Service Provider business unit, and vice president and general manager of Cisco's high-end router business. He has also served as a member of the board of YouTube (GOOG) and LoveFilm (AMZN).Before working at Cisco, Bates spearheaded the backbone-engineering strategy for Internet MCI (MCI's national IP backbone). He has more than 20 years of experience in the Internet and telecommunications industries, and has published 12 IETF RFCs in the areas of Internet Routing and Operations. He holds nine patents in the area of Layer 2 and Layer 3 innovations.

Mark Leslie

Board Member

Mark is a Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for courses in Entrepreneurship and Sales Organization. Prior to Stanford, he was the founding Chairman and CEO of Veritas Software. During his tenure, Veritas went from 12 to 5,500 employees, and from a revenue base of $95,000 to $1.5 billion per year. In 2000, Veritas was the 10th largest independent software company by revenue, third largest by market capitalization, and became a Fortune 1000 company. Mark is also the managing director of Leslie Ventures and serves on the boards of many public, private and non-profit companies such as NetApp Corporation, SugarCRM, Wall Street Systems, Xsigo Corporation, NYU Board of Overseers, NYU Science Advisory Board or Community Foundation of Silicon Valley. He received a bachelor’s degree in physics and mathematics from New York University and completed Harvard Business School’s Program for Management Development (PMD).

Bill Meehan

Board Member

Bill is a Lecturer in Strategic Management and the Raccoon Partners Lecturer at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business and a Director Emeritus of McKinsey. His teachings and research are focused on two areas: general management and leadership; and nonprofits, social entrepreneurship and philanthropy. At McKinsey Bill’s focus was on working with executives in technology, private equity, retail, financial services and media on topics of corporate strategy, organization and leadership. Bill was Chair of the Client Committee and Chair of the McKinsey Investment Office, which oversees more than $5 billion in investments. He was also Vice-Chair of the Directors Review Committee, Founder and Chair of the Private Equity and Venture Capital Practice, Chair of the West Coast Practice and Managing Director of the San Francisco Office. He is currently a Director of Juniper Networks. He received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia and an MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Shirish Sathaye

Shirish Sathaye
Board Member
Shirish is a Partner at Khosla Ventures, which he joined in 2010. He has held leadership roles in a number of start-ups, including FORE Systems and Alteon WebSystems, where he was the VP of Engineering and Chief Technology Officer after spending eight years of his career at DEC working on networking ASICs, network protocols and routing software. Prior to Khosla, he was a partner at Matrix Partners, where he spent a decade as a general partner investing in companies as diverse as Aruba Networks, Tigo Energy, Grandis, Inc. and Solidcore Systems. He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the Institute of Technology in Varanasi, a masters in engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon.

Mike Volpi

Board Member
Mike is a Partner at Index Ventures, which he joined in 2009. He focuses on investments in Internet, telecom/networking and enterprise software. He also contributes to the firm’s later stage growth fund, and he currently sits on the boards of Cloud.com (CTRX), Sonos, Soundcloud, Lookout, Path, Zuora, Hortonworks, Pure Storage, Storsimple and EXOR SpA (EXO:IM). Mike was SVP & General Manager of the Routing and Service Provider Technology Group, where he led Cisco’s business for the Service Provider market, and was also responsible for all of Cisco’s routing and access products. In 2007, this was an $11 billion business for Cisco. He also served as the company’s Chief Strategy Officer. During this tenure, Mike was instrumental in the creation of the company’s acquisition and investment strategies, as Cisco acquired more than 70 companies during his tenure. He has an MS and BS in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.