MANAGEMENT
SCIENCE & ENGINEERING 273
TECHNOLOGY
VENTURE FORMATION
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Michael G. Lyons
Email: mike.lyons@compasscapital.com
Consulting Associate Professor
Management Science and Engineering
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Mr. Lyons currently serves as a Venture Partner at Paladin Capital Group in Washington,D.C. With $1B under management, Paladin is focused on a range of investment stages from early to late with principal interest in Homeland Security and companies using a dual use business model.
Previously, he served as an Executive Director of ePlanet Ventures II, a $500M early to mid-stage venture fund. From 2002 to 2006, he was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Vanguard Ventures, a premier Silicon Valley venture capital firm, and a Sr. Advisory Director of Investcorp, a large NY-based late stage venture capital firm. An early stage technology-focused investor, he has worked closely with InCube, a high technology medical device incubator founded by Mir Imran. He was a co-founder and General Partner of Zilkha Venture Partners (Fund closed out in 2003), an early stage venture capital partnership focused on seed and first round investments in IT and bio-technology companies, principally located in Silicon Valley. That Fund had a first closing in July, 1999, has been fully invested since 2001, and has returned more than invested capital. As GP, Mr. Lyons invested alongside Mr. Imran in CardioVasc, Novasonics, and Picaro Systems. The Fund was a founding investor in SpecialtyMD.com (sold to Ventro in 2000), Selectica, Inc. (SLTC) that CSFB took public in March 2000 with a first day closing valuation of $4.9B, and Applied Discovery, sold in 2003 to LexisNexis. Mr. Lyons served as a Director of Selectica from 1998 to 2005. He was also a founding investor, CEO, and director of the bio-photonics and telecom Stanford spinout Informed Diagnostics (now Picaro) which has raised in excess of $70M in venture financing. He founded SafeView, Inc. in 2002, a Government Laboratory (PNNL) spinout, to address aspects of the anti-terrorist physical security market; the Company closed A and B rounds totaling more than $23M led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson, ePlanet Ventures, GE/Invision, Paladin Ventures and Novak Biddle. He served as Chairman until its sale to L3 Communications in March, 2006. He currently serves as a Director of Real-Time Innovations, Packaged Business Solutions, as observer for Quantalife, and as Chairman of FuturePoint Systems, a lab spinout focused on data visualization.
Concurrently, Mr. Lyons is a Consulting Associate Professor at the Stanford University Department of Management Science and Engineering. Serving in that position since 1988, he was a co-developer of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program with Prof. Tom Byers. He is a founding professor of Technology Venture Formation, one of the most highly rated courses in the School of Engineering, which he currently co-teaches with Audrey MacLean, a leading Silicon Valley Angel investor. He has lectured on entrepreneurship education in Dublin, Edinburgh, and Helsinki. He was also a charter faculty member for the IESE/Stanford Institute for Strategic Management of Technology Companies held annually in Barcelona, Spain. Mr. Lyons also served as a mentor and selection committee member for Silicon Valley Scholars, a scholarship program sponsored by the Noyce Foundation, for high school juniors and seniors demonstrating exceptional leadership potential for careers in the practical sciences. He co-founded, with Andy Rappaport (August Capital) and renowned jazz guitarist Bruce Forman, JazzMasters Workshops, a nationally recognized high-school jazz education program ( http://www.jazzmastersworkshop.org/).
From 1980 to 1991, he was a co-founder, a Vice-President, and a Director of Integrated Systems Inc. (INTS)(founded 1980), a leading implementer of high-performance real-time control systems for aircraft, automotive, and manufacturing applications. He was responsible for all contract R&D, prototype product development, and hardware systems development from 1981 to 1991 and built an R&D team that was internationally recognized. He was a key member of the management team that brought the company public with Alex. Brown and Hambrecht & Quist, in 1990. The Company was merged with WindRiver Systems in 1999.
Prior to Integrated Systems, Mr. Lyons held various positions with the Lockheed Missiles and Space Co. He managed all control systems R&D at the LMSC Palo Alto Research Laboratory (now the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center) from 1975-1981. As a Senior Staff Scientist he was responsible for creating a major research program, funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, focused on active structural control for large space-based systems. This program established Lockheed as the leading research contractor in this field of technology.
Mr. Lyons received a Bachelors and Masters (equivalent) in Engineering Physics from Cornell University in 1965, an MSEE from Stanford in 1966, and an MBA, with Distinction, from the Pepperdine Presidential/Key Executive Program in 1988. He conducted Ph.D research in the Stanford Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics between 1970-74. He is a graduate of the Stanford/AEA Institute for the Management of High Technology Companies and a Price-Babson Fellow in Entrepreneurship Education. He has operated several business aircraft, founded ProCharter Air Transport, and currently holds Multi-Engine Airline Transport Pilot and flight instructor certificates.
