Peter Solvik

Peter Solvik is an American venture capitalist in technology companies. He was formerly a chief information officer at Cisco Systems, Inc.^[1]

Education

Solvik got his undergraduate degree in 1980 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the school's first graduate with a dual degree in business and computer science.^[2]

Career

Information technology

After graduating, Solvik joined Texas Instruments, and moved to Apple as the personal computing sector took off, where he ran its AppleLink group.^[2][3] After 11 years at Apple, he served as Senior Vice President and CIO of Cisco Systems, Inc. from 1993 until 2002.^[4][5][6][7] While at Cisco, Solvik was an executive sponsor of internal initiatives such as the creation of Status Agent, which allowed customers to track the status of their own orders online.^[8] He was instrumental in Cisco's acquisition of over 100 companies,^[4] including Calico Technology.^[8]

In August 2000, BusinessWeek recognized Solvik as a "standout" CIO for his leadership of Cisco's e-sales and supply chain management initiatives, which had resulted in a reduction of $1.5 billion in costs by using Internet technologies across a wide range of areas, including human resources and manufacturing.^[9] In December 2000, Network World named him one of its "25 most powerful people in networking".^[10] That same year, B to B magazine named him one of its "Top 25 E-Champions".^[11]

Venture capital

Solvik is co-founder and Managing Director of Jackson Square Ventures (fka Sigma West), a venture capital firm focused on B2B SaaS and Marketplaces.^[12] Previously, he was a Managing Director at Sigma Partners, which he joined in 2002. Prior to Sigma, he also served on the Board of Directors of myCFO.

Solvik's successful investments include DocuSign; his fund's $17.5 million investment in that company was valued at $687 million when the company when public in 2018.^[1]