Ross Mayfield

Chairman, President and co-founder of Socialtext

"Optimism is the truest form of moral courage"
-- Ernest Shackleton

Formal bio

Ross Mayfield is an internet entrepreneur and VP of Business Development at SlideShare, the world's largest professional sharing community. He is also Chairman and Co-founder of Socialtext, the first wiki company and leading provider of Enterprise 2.0 solutions. Mayfield served as Socialtext CEO from 2002-2007 and President from 2007-2011. Socialtext is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SAP Ventures, Intel Capital and Omidyar Network and prominent Silicon Valley angels.

Previously, Mayfield served as VP of Marketing for a Fujitsu spinout and CEO of an enterprise risk management software company. Mayfield co-founded and served as president of RateXchange (AMEX:RTX), the leading B2B commodity exchange for telecom. Mayfield served as the marketing director of the largest privately held telecommunications group in Eastern Europe and was the internal lead manager of their Initial Public Offering. He also founded an ISP, a web-design company, and has served on a number of Advisory Boards of high tech startups.

Mayfield is a former advisor to the Office of the President of Estonia and began his career in the non-profit sector. He holds a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California at Los Angeles and completed the Management Development for Entrepreneurs (MDE) program of the Anderson School of Business. He resides in his hometown of Palo Alto with his wife and two children.

Disclosures

• Views expressed on this weblog are my own. I am not paid to write for anyone on this blog.
• My bias in favor of Socialtext should be obvious.
• Through Socialtext, I have direct ties to organizations such as Omidyar Network, LinkedIn, Tribe and Neoteny.
• Advisor to:

  • BuzzGain -- stealth mode
  • DailyEndeavor -- stealth mode
  • Dabble -- video sharing
  • Dandelife -- social biography network
  • Eventful -- event and venue database
  • Lumeno.us -- small business sharing
  • QuantumArt -- content management
  • Plazes -- location based social software
  • SlideShare -- slide sharing
  • Triggit -- ad sharing

• Member of the Silicon Valley 100, so I get some free crap now and then, but will always disclose when I get it, if I am writing about it and what I will do with it.

Photo credit: Alex Dunne at Enterprise 2.0