S. Somasegar

Soma Somasegar is an Indian American technology business executive in the Greater Seattle Area. He is a managing director at Madrona Venture Group, a venture capital firm based in Seattle.[1] Somasegar joined Madrona in November 2015 after a 27-year career at Microsoft, where he most recently was corporate vice president of the developer division and overseeing the global distributed R&D centers at Microsoft.[2]

S. Somasegar
2010
BornAugust 1966 (age 54)
India
OccupationBusinessman
TitleManaging director, Madrona Venture Group
Websitewww.madrona.com/team-profiles/s-somasegar

Early life

Somasegar was born in August 1966 and grew up in Pondicherry, India with his parents and a sibling.[3]

Somasegar attended Petit Seminaire Higher Secondary School in Pondicherry. In 1986 he received a bachelor's degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Guindy Engineering College, Anna University in Chennai, India. Soma then moved to the US where he received a master's degree in Computer Engineering from Louisiana State University in 1988. He was working toward a PhD in Computer Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo when he joined Microsoft in January 1989.[3][4][5][6]

Career

Microsoft

Somasegar joined Microsoft Corporation in January 1989 as a software design engineer and had a career spanning almost 27 years as he rose through the ranks to be a senior vice president.[7]

Somasegar joined the Operating System group at Microsoft, working on OS/2, the early versions of NT and Windows – in all eight different releases of the Windows family of product.[7]

As the leader of developer division, Somasegar was responsible for engineering, marketing and evangelizing developer tools and services, programming languages and runtimes designed for a broad base of software developers and development teams, including the Visual Studio family of products, .NET Framework, and Team Foundation Server. His team was also responsible for MSDN and TechNet online properties to enable a deep connection with the developer and IT professional audiences.[8] In addition, Somasegar was the founder of Microsoft's India R&D efforts, and the executive sponsor for Microsoft's global development centers including the R&D efforts in China, India and Israel.[7]

Under Somasegar's leadership, the Microsoft Developer Division, which supports over six million .NET developers worldwide, expanded its mission to deliver developer tools and services for mobile development and cloud development across a variety of platforms and programming technologies through the Visual Studio and .NET family of products.[7]

Madrona Venture Group

Somasegar joined Madrona Venture Group in November 2015, a venture capital firm based in Seattle, investing primarily in early-stage Pacific Northwest technology companies.[9] As a managing director at Madrona,[10] Somasegar focuses on investment areas including machine learning/artificial intelligence, multi-sense user interfaces, next generation cloud infrastructure,[11] intelligent applications, and robotic process automation (RPA).[12][13][14] Somasegar has authored several articles outlining Madrona's perspective on how these technologies will evolve.[15][16][17]

Angel Investing

Somasegar has been an active angel and seed investor since the early 2000s, investing in companies both in the U.S. and globally.[2]

Personal life

Somasegar lives in the Seattle area with his wife Akila, and their two daughters.[18]

In August 2019, Somasegar and Akila joined the ownership group of Seattle Sounders FC, a Major League Soccer club.[19]

Awards

Somasegar received an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, Anna University (November 2006).[20]

Somasegar was presented with the Asian American Engineer of the Year Award from the Chinese Institute of Engineers USA (CIE-USA) (February 2008).[21]

References
  1. "Madrona Venture Group Names S. Somasegar Managing Director". VentureBeat. January 12, 2017.
  2. "S. Somasegar Joins Madrona Venture Group as Venture Partner". VentureBeat. November 18, 2015.
  3. Josey Puliyenthuruthel (April 19, 2008). "S. Somasegar: Breathing easy in the fast lane". LiveMint.com. HT Media.
  4. "Dr. S. Somasegar is a technology guru at Microsoft". Diversity/Careers. June–July 2008.
  5. "S. Somasegar". The Times of India.
  6. "Interview with S Somasegar, Corporate VP, Microsoft Corp". November 9, 2006.
  7. "Microsoft Corporate Bio". June 8, 2010.
  8. Darryl K. Taft (2005-01-31). "The Importance of Microsoft Being Transparent". eWeek.
  9. Day, Matt (November 18, 2015). "Ex-Microsoft exec Soma Somasegar now at Madrona". The Seattle Times.
  10. "Madrona appoints Microsoft's former developer division chief as managing partner". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-01-02.
  11. "Pulumi raises $15M in Series A funding, launches its SaaS multicloud app deployment service". GeekWire. 2018-10-22. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  12. "UiPath Announces the Addition of Carl Eschenbach and S. Somasegar to Its Board". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  13. "Software robot startup UiPath lands funding from Madrona and others, plans Seattle-area expansion". GeekWire. 2018-11-14. Retrieved 2019-01-04.
  14. "Madrona Venture Group Bio".
  15. "The intelligent app ecosystem (is more than just bots!)". TechCrunch. May 24, 2016.
  16. "Every company is a technology company, but most don't behave like one". TechCrunch. November 29, 2016.
  17. "Technology trends changing the world as we look ahead (slideshow)". TechCrunch. January 1, 2017.
  18. Stephen Ibaraki (June 9, 2006). "Interview with Microsoft's S. "Soma" Somasegar". InformIT.
  19. Evans, Jayda (August 13, 2019). "Russell Wilson, Ciara, Macklemore, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and more join Sounders ownership". The Seattle Times. Retrieved September 1, 2019.
  20. "Honorary Doctorate Speechless!". The Smart Techie. December 2006.
  21. "2008 Engineers Week: Asian American Engineer of the Year Awards". Chinese Institute of Engineers – USA. January 7, 2008.
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