Bob Rosin
General Partner at defy.vc
Bob Rosin
General Partner at defy.vc
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Work Experience
General Partner
2020 - Current
Investor at Defy.vc, a venture capital firm with over $700M under management focused on early stage technology businesses.
Angel Investor
2011
17 angel investments of which three are now unicorns: Stripe, Tenor (GOOG), MindMeld (CSCO), Cursor Data (Data Robot), Workato, Tonal Fitness, Curated, Metric Insights, Next Force Technology, Accord, Cardless, Prairie Health (Carbon Health), MyTime, Capchase, TruePlan, Catch, Inversion Space, and Ava Finance.
Mentor
2009
The Founder Institute trains new and seasoned founders on the current best practices for building the next generation of companies. Now operating in 185 cities around the world, the Founder Institute has helped entrepreneurs start over 4000 companies currently employing over 25,000 people.
Member, Board of Directors
2021 - 2024
Elevate Security provides infrastructure to quantify and proactively address workforce risk, a critical element of cybersecurity defenses. Implemented by organizations ranging from Pepsico to Bristol Myers Squibb, Elevate's investors include Defy.vc, Costanoa Ventures, Foundry Group, In-Q-Tel, Shasta Ventures, as well as Cisco, Salesforce, Crowdstrike. Elevate Security was acquired by Mimecast in January 2024.
Advisor & Interim Head of BD
2019 - 2020
Advisor and acting head of business development and partnerships for Benchmark-backed labor marketplace Instawork. Instawork enables hundreds of thousands of professionals to connect with businesses to find economic opportunities.
Head of Partnerships
2018 - 2020
Helping to build the economic infrastructure the internet. Member of the Exec Leadership Team and responsible for the Partnerships function at Stripe. Focused on developing the partner ecosystem to help the millions of companies in over 100 countries who use Stripe to start, run, and scale their businesses online.
VP Global Business Development
2013 - 2018
Responsible for leading global partnerships and platform for LinkedIn. Member of Product Executive team and participant in all product, strategy, and corp dev reviews. Focused on increasing value for LinkedIn members, and for driving growth, engagement, and monetization globally through partnerships and our developer ecosystem. Established BD as Product function at LinkedIn and successfully drove ecosystem and strategic partner programs across all product areas and lines of business, as well as managing LinkedIn's developer program and anti-scraping initiatives. Examples of achievements at LinkedIn include: - Commitments for LinkedIn app distribution on over 1B devices as well as deep product integrations - Core growth partnerships driving material percentage of all new LI signups - China partnerships driving majority of growth in China to 40M+ members; established key partners in India and other international markets - Re-launch of LinkedIn developer program with 100K+ partners - Publisher relations including 1.7M+ InShare partners and 35+ video publisher partners - Talent Solutions platform programs including Recruiter System Connect with critical ATS partners - Marketing Solutions partnership programs including Sponsored Updates API and LinkedIn Audience Network - Sales Solutions partner programs including Sales Navigator Application Platform - Learning Management System partner program launch - 75+ job board partnerships globally; numerous company data partnerships - Rebooted and led cross-functional anti-abuse and anti-scraping initiative with dramatic improvement in defenses and enforcement, culminating in a critical win in a case that went to the US Supreme Court - Built strong BD culture at LinkedIn; grew team 5x in size; developed leadership and talent
VP & GM, Business Development, Skype Division
2012 - 2013
Responsible for business development and partnership activities of Skype division of Microsoft. Manage world-class business development team. Drive partnership strategy and execution including preloading on over 160 million PC's per year, partnerships with a broad range of mobile operators and OEMs, Facebook and other web partners, advertising partnerships, creation of the world's largest WiFi network with over 1.5M hotspots, living room partnerships including Comcast and other MSO's, and other strategic partnerships as well as transactional support across the organization with over 1300 employees and $1B in revenue.
VP Business Development
2011 - 2012
Responsible for Skype's business development activities. Includes consumer, enterprise, service provider and other partnerships across mobile, desktop, and embedded devices. Exceeded revenue objectives and developed world-class business development team. During tenure in this role, user base grew 40% to 254M monthly users and engagement grew 58% to over 115 billion calling minutes per calendar quarter with over 50% video; revenue grew to $1B. Acquired by Microsoft for $8.5B. Recognition for contribution to integration process and division stand-up.
Head of Business Development - Qik
2011 - 2011
Responsible for continuing the growth of the Qik business and integration into Skype post-acquisition. Executed this role successfully resulting in promotion to lead all business development for Skype.
EVP, Business Development, Corporate Development, and Sales
2010 - 2011
Led all business-related activities for mobile video startup Qik, funded by leading investors including Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Mark Benioff, Quest Venture Partners, Almaz Capital, Camp Ventures. Drove distribution and monetization with mobile operators partnerships including AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, Docomo, Softbank, and OEMs including Samsung, Motorola, LGE, Nokia, Sony, Cisco, and others. Led fundraising with significant up round. Drove M&A process culminating in acquisition by Skype for $150M with strong returns for all shareholders.