Drew Lanza –

VCJ Fact Sheet for Drew Lanza

Born: June 11, 1956

Education: Stanford University (BSEE, MSEE); Harvard University (MBA)

Career Path: Drew Lanza joined Morgenthaler as a Venture Partner in 2000, and is now a General Partner. Previously, he served as Senior VP of Marketing at MAYAN Networks, building aggregation systems for the metropolitan edge market. Prior to that, Drew was a founder and VP of Engineering at E/O Networks where he helped to design and produce a long reach rural fiber optic telephony system. Drew started his optical telecommunications career in 1986 at Raynet, a pioneering company in the development of fiber to the home technologies. Drew was the founding CEO and currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors of Lightwave Microsystems, a leader in the design and manufacture of high volume optical integrated circuits.

Venture Focus: Optical telecommunications systems, subsystems, and components.

Investments: Caspian Networks; FiberSpace; Ignis Optics; VSK Photonics; Yotta Networks

Greatest Accomplishment: Co-founding Lightwave Microsystems.

Biggest Mistake: Not leaving soon enough when companies started falling apart and there was nothing I could do to help.

If you weren’t a VC, you’d be a? CEO of a company I founded.

Pet Peeve: Working for an idiot (“If you’re going to work for an idiot, you might as well work for yourself”).

Did You Know? I?ve been the social chairman of every organization I’ve ever belonged to or started. Not bad for an Electrical Engineer!

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