Mr. Wendell is the founder and a Managing Director of Sierra Ventures, a technology-oriented Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that has invested more than $2 billion over the past 30 years in a wide variety of successful technology companies. Sierra focuses its investments in early stage and emerging growth technology-related opportunities, often working with companies from their inception. During his 25-year active investing period at Sierra, he helped originate and manage multiple Sierra investments that ultimately attained multi-billion-dollar public company market values including Intuit, Teradata, Amerigroup, and On Assignment.
Mr. Wendell received a A.B. from Princeton University, magna cum laude, and an MBA from Harvard Business School with distinction. He is on the board of directors of Merck & Co., where he chaired the board’s audit committee and currently serves on the compensation and research committees. Mr. Wendell also currently serves as a Senior Advisor to and a member of the Board of Directors of WestBridge Capital, a $3 billion India investor; the Senior Advisor to the family office of Google former CEO Eric Schmidt and functions in a similar capacity for several other multi-generational families.
Since 1991 Mr. Wendell has held a faculty appointment at Stanford Business School where he has taught the "Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital" course to over 2,000 Stanford MBAs, co-teaching with Eric Schmidt for the past 15 years. Mr. Wendell currently serves on the board of Living Spaces LLC, a company founded by two former students.
During Mr. Wendell’s career, he has served as a member of the corporate board of directors of more than 25 companies, including 10 U.S. public companies. Since 2000 Mr. Wendell has been a Charter Trustee of Princeton University, currently serves as one of the three Princeton board officers, and formerly chaired the board of the Princeton University Investment Company ("PRINCO"), the organization responsible for Princeton’s $25 billion endowment.
Mr. Wendell and his wife Lynn have six children and live in San Francisco.
