John Thompson, Venture Partner, San Francisco, California, United States — verified investor profile. See portfolio and contact routes.
John W. Thompson is a Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, joining the firm in 2018 after serving as Chairman of Microsoft from 2014 to 2021 and holding executive roles at Symantec, Virtual Instruments, and IBM[2][5][6]. He actively invests in early-stage technology companies in Silicon Valley, focusing on Seed and Series B stages across the sector[2][9]. His typical check size ranges from $3.0 million to $20.0 million, with a sweet spot around $15.0 million, and he has made 38 recorded investments through Lightspeed[1]. Notable portfolio companies include Hasura, Armorblox, Multiverse, and Moveworks, alongside earlier investments in Symantec and Clumio[9][10]. Thompson is recognized as one of the most prominent Black venture capitalists and serves on the boards of Illumina, Rubrik, and Illumio while advising early-stage firms[2][8][6]. While he has no widely published public writing cited in the search results, his distinctive perspective centers on leveraging decades of enterprise technology leadership to support cloud and security innovators[2][8].
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