People

Steve Vassallo, Venture Partner

As a Venture Partner at Foundation Capital, Steve's primary focus is on new opportunities in Cleantech. An entrepreneur who lives at the intersection of business, technology, and design, Steve has spent the last 14 years launching and building a broad array of successful companies and products. 

Steve currently serves on the board of directors of SunRun and is actively involved with Purfresh, Serious Materials, and VaST Systems. Steve also serves as an advisor to the Aquaya Institute, a nonprofit research and consulting firm focused on bringing safe water innovations to vulnerable populations.

Prior to joining Foundation Capital in 2007, Steve helped launch Ning, a consumer Internet service where anyone can create his or her own social network for anything. Prior to Ning, Steve was Director of Mechanical Engineering at Immersion, a development and licensing firm that pioneered tactile feedback and human touch technology. Prior to Immersion, Steve was a project leader and design engineer at IDEO, where he developed more than a dozen successful products for market leading companies including Cisco, Nike, BMW, Steelcase, McDonalds, and Caterpillar. Steve holds more than 20 patents and has received numerous product awards including Business Week Design of the Decade Award, IDEA99 Gold and Bronze Awards, NeoCon Gold and Most Innovative New Product Awards. 

Steve earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was an Arjay Miller Scholar.

When Steve is able to break away from brainstorming the next big idea, he enjoys building Lego robots with his two children and bicycling through the Palo Alto foothills with his wife and best friend, Trae.