Overview

Gender

male

Investor Type

Investment Partner,Angel

Investor Stage

Seed

Rob Adams is the Founder and Owner at XTT Consulting and Startup Arts since November 2013. Rob manages Startup Arts to inform and educate current and budding entrepreneurs so they can reach their full potential.

Rob also owns XTT Consulting where he specializes in business and technology strategy development, transformation initiatives, investment and acquisition, entrepreneurship and talent development projects with clients ranging from startups to Fortune 100’s.

Rob is an accomplished, experienced business leader, angel investor and advisor to startups, enterprises, venture capital and private equity firms as well as an executive mentor. Rob has over 30 years of industry experience in leadership in corporate venture investing and M&A, corporate technology strategy, talent development, global team leadership, strategic partnering, computer science and software architecture, which gives him a unique and holistic perspective on business challenges.

Rob currently sits on roughly 12 advisory boards, is a Mentor at the 9Mile Labs, the Alchemist and the University of Washington’s Jones Foster accelerators.

Prior to founding XTT Consulting and Startup Arts, Rob spent eight years as Senior Director of Cisco Corporate Development Technology Group, leading a global team responsible for diligence on investments and acquisitions, competitive analysis, Cisco’s Tech Radar, managing Cisco’s roughly $2B venture investment portfolio, creating business and technology disruptions, building technology strategy with Cisco’s businesses, competitiveness and innovation transformation initiatives and development of Cisco’s top technical talent. In his 18 years at Cisco, Rob also lead Cisco’s $3.6B strategic alliance with IBM and developed Cisco’s partnering strategy with numerous partners and joint ventures.

Rob’s previous experience includes Senior Software Architecture and computer science roles in security software, databases, networking, programming languages and operating systems at Digital Equipment Corporation, Progress Software and TGV and Cisco.

Rob received his B.S. in Computer Science from Penn State and completed Executive MBA courses at Harvard Business School.