Jim Lussier has led US-based computer maker Dell’s corporate venturing unit for more than two years. This year Dell has been taken private by its founder Michael Dell in partnership with buyout firm Silver Lake for $24.9bn.
Lussier joined the unit from venture firm Norwest Venture Partners, where he was a general partner, and worked for more than 11 years.
From 1998 to 2000, Lussier was a vice president and general manager at Beyond.com, a publicly traded e-commerce company. Between 1992 and 1998 Lussier managed the high-tech strategy practice at consulting firm Accenture as an associate partner, while he was also a long-term employee of consulting firm Booz, Allen & Hamilton. Lussier has an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a degree from University of Pennsylvania – the Wharton School.
Lussier said: “Dell Ventures was created with the goal of investing in and supporting new businesses that align with Dell’s expertise and strategic direction. We are looking to collaborate with cutting-edge entrepreneurs and investors who share our vision in emerging technology areas, including cloud, next-generation data centre, big data, storage, security and mobile.”
He added: “We invest in early to growth-stage companies in our targeted areas and function as strategic investors and board advisers. We can invest from $2m to $15m into a round, with the normal investment averaging $3m to $5m. We prefer to co-invest with other venture capital firms, and can lead investment rounds when appropriate. As a strategic investor, Dell provides deep technical expertise and business counsel as well as access to Dell’s brand scale, channel, original equipment manufacturing and go-to-market relationships.”
What is the future of your sector?
Lussier said: “The IT industry is changing as a result of multiple disruptive trends. Data centre infrastructure is becoming increasingly virtualised, converged and automated. The rise of cloud computing is transforming where and how processing occurs and how businesses manage their infrastructure and applications. The explosive growth in data and the need to make sense of it is creating a rapidly rising demand for storage and analytics. And the proliferation of mobile devices is creating new opportunities to transform our business and personal lives and at the same time creating new security challenges. From an investment perspective, the enterprise IT sector has become hot again and is attracting great entrepreneurial talent with compelling ideas.”
He added: “We expect these trends to continue for the next several years giving rise to some great products and companies. In some areas the incumbents will be challenged. The incumbents that will survive and prosper will be those who do the best job of innovating, both through their own internal research and development efforts as well as through partnering these innovative start-ups. As a newly private company, Dell is the world’s largest start-up, and as a result is better positioned to shape these key forces in our industry just as we did when we helped revolutionise the power of the personal computer almost 30 years ago. Dell Ventures will invest in and partner with the most promising start-ups in these disruptive areas, contributing to entrepreneurial success and enabling Dell to bring the best solutions to our customers.”
