Paul Holland is a former head of Worldwide Sales for a number of highly successful start-up companies. Paul has led global sales forces that have generated over $13B in market capitalization. He has spoken for dozens of organizations over the years, usually on the topic of high performance software sales. He has worked with some of the best software CEOs in the business (Reed Hastings, Pure SW and now Netflix; and Mark Gainey, Kana and now Strava). He has extensive experience in software security from his work with MobileIron, Coverity, Skycure and others in the Foundation Capital portfolio. Given his years in venture capital, Paul can help sales forces understand how well they are performing compared to “normal” start-ups, which his audience members find very motivational.
Paul helps take start-up companies from zero to $100M quickly. Professionally, Paul’s favorite place to be is “inside the tornado” of a fast growing, dynamic start-up. He invests in the IT, security, consumer, and digital energy sectors; and is on the boards of Homesuite, Peerspace, SkyCure, Dreambox Learning, Kik and InsideView. Past investments include Chegg (CHGG), MobileIron (MOBL), Coverity (acquired by Synopsys), Averail (acquired by MobileIron), Conformia (acquired by Oracle), Ketera (acquired by Rearden Commerce), RouteScience (acquired by Avaya), Talking Blocks (acquired by Hewlett-Packard), and TuVox (acquired by West).
Paul began his career at SRI International, where–as he likes to tell his kids–he was like a “human Google,” conducting inquiries on a broad variety of topics for Global 2000 companies. He received his MBA from UC Berkeley, MA from University of Virginia, and BS from James Madison University.
Paul, his wife Linda, and their three teenage daughters live in tah.mah.lah, their aggressively “green” house in Portola Valley. Paul is a former president of the Western Association of Venture Capitalists; and is the producer of Something Ventured, a critically acclaimed documentary about the early days of the Silicon Valley. He has guest lectured on entrepreneurship at Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Dartmouth, MIT, and James Madison University.
