Rob Stavis Led Skype Series A

Thank you Rob for chasing down two elusive programmers in Amsterdam (Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis), and leading Skype's first round of venture capital. The acquisition by eBay generated a record multiple for us, and in under 2 years.

Venture capital is a career change for Stavis, who had previously succeeded Meriwether as head of Salomon's global arbitrage trading desk. After years of serving on Salomon's executive committee, Stavis spent a few years as an angel investor, funding novel financial service firms like reinsurer PXRE (now public on NYSE), and technology ventures like Arbinet (now public on NASADAQ). More importantly, Stavis led the funding rounds of New York's hottest restaurants (Union Pacific, Calle Ocho, Django, and Rain) and toughest golf club courses (Friar's Head, ranked #1 by GolfWeek).

Stavis joined Bessemer's New York office as a part-timer in 2000, but we have since managed to suck him in full time. Other Stavis investments include Gerson Lehrman Group, Soleil Securities, and Revver (a stealth venture in P2P video). He is an insightful, athletic and genuinely nice guy who both maddens and inspires you by just naturally doing everything so well: skiing, golf, math, diving, cooking, and, now, venture capital.