Scott Maxwell

Scott Maxwell partners with management teams, boards, and investors to help build great companies.

Professional Interest

Scott is constantly seeking out companies that have the aspiration of becoming unique and dominant in their product market and, post investment, works hard to help those companies realize their vision.  He focuses on distinctive business models and products that uniquely address a meaningful market pain point.  This includes a broad interest in application and infrastructure companies, and businesses that are addressing the next generation of technology, including SAAS, Cloud computing, mobile platforms, storage, networking, IT tools, and development tools.

Experience

Scott has been a Venture Capitalist since 2000, first as a senior Managing Director at Insight Venture Partners, and then as the founder of OpenView Venture Partners.  He has worked with numerous companies to help them craft and realize their visions.

At OpenView, and previously at Insight, Scott worked to develop and communicate the vision that an institutionalized venture capital firm can — and should — offer meaningful value beyond the capital that it invests. He has spent over a decade iterating on that approach, which includes the development of our investment focus and team, OpenView Labs team, and our content sites for executives.

Scott led the team that founded OpenView in 2006 to continue developing his model for investing in and adding meaningful value to expansion stage technology companies.  Since OpenView’s inception, Scott has served on the board of directors or worked in some fashion with most of the OpenView portfolio companies.

Before founding OpenView, Scott joined Insight Venture Partners in 2000 as the Chief Operating Officer.  At Insight, Scott led the effort to institutionalize the investment process, outbound program, value-add program, and finance, legal, and administration departments.  After institutionalizing the investment strategy and infrastructure, Scott started leading deal work in 2001 and was the partner responsible for investing in eight of Insight’s portfolio companies.

Prior to becoming a Venture Capitalist in 2000, Scott spent the 1990s primarily working with financial services companies.  Scott was a Partner at Putnam Investments, where he was Managing Director, Corporate Development, and was appointed to run Putnam’s alternative asset management program.  Prior to Putnam Investments, he was Senior Vice President at Lehman Brothers, where he was the Chief Financial Officer of the Global Equity Division and a member of the Global Equities Executive Committee. Before Lehman, he was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he focused primarily on financial institutions.

Scott spent the 1980s as a technology designer and developer, and was responsible for designing and developing automation systems at two California-based start-up companies. During that time, he also lectured at California State University, Sacramento.

Education

Scott graduated from M.I.T. with a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Science in Management from the M.I.T. Sloan MBA program. He also has a BS and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis.

Did you know?

Scott was the Chairman of the Board of Governors at the Muddy Charles Pub (a well-known M.I.T. drinking hole) while he was a graduate student at M.I.T.  Scott Maxwell is also a Certified ScrumMaster and spends time applying the principles of Agile software development to technology company development.