John Chisholm

John Chisholm is CEO of San Francisco-based John Chisholm Ventures, an entrepreneurial advisory and investment firm. He is founder and former CEO/chair of Decisive Technology (now part of Google), the first company to automate surveys on the Internet, and of CustomerSat (now part of ConfirmIt), a leader in enterprise feedback management. He is a trustee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), of the Santa Fe Institute, and is a member of the US Council on Competitiveness. He serves on the Recommendation Committee for Internet Achievements at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, and on the visiting committees for MIT Social Sciences and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society. He is past president and chair of the worldwide MIT Alumni Association and past chair of the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society. He has served on advisory councils of the Institute for New Economic Thinking and of the Association for Interactive Media. He authored the popular guide to entrepreneurship, Unleash Your Inner Company, and mentors or has mentored entrepreneurs through the Hult Prize, the Thiel Fellowship, the European Innovation Academy, the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, and Plug and Play Tech Centers.

A contributor to Forbes, he frequently speaks and writes on what forms of regulation and law promote vs. stifle entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth; the future of education; how to create Silicon Valleys around the world; and how anyone can become an innovator. An author of two US patents, he holds bachelors and masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School. An avid mountain climber, he has summited Mounts Rainier, Shasta, St. Helens, and Whitney, and a live volcano in Chile.