Russell Siegelman teaches S356 “Evaluating Entrepreneurial Opportunities”; he is very familiar with the course having taught it in 2008 and mentored teams in this course for many years. Russell draws from seven years of high tech experience at Microsoft and 11+ years as a venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) to help his students experience the art and science of evaluating and pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities. He expects that he and his students will both learn and have fun while working on projects that they are passionate about.

Russell has spent 10+ years as a Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), where he has invested in consumer and Internet related technologies and markets, including software, electronic commerce, Web services, semiconductors, consumer systems, media and telecommunications. He is still active on many KPCB boards including Digital Chocolate, Friendster, Lilliputian Systems, Mobilygen, Pixtronix, and RazorGator. He also makes personal angel investments, some of which he serves as board member. He is an investor and board member in Rondavu, Yardbarker and Snapvine, and an investor in Idapted, a company that was started by a team he mentored in S356 two years ago.

He is also the Chairman of the Board of the non-profit organization Sustainable Conservation and a Trustee at The Nueva School.

Russell joined KPCB after seven years at Microsoft. After spending three years in the networking and operating businesses at Microsoft, he worked directly for Bill Gates, during which time he researched the online market and recommended an entry strategy for that market. This led to the formation the Microsoft Network (MSN), Microsoft's online service. Russell became the first employee of this division and became its General Manager and then Vice President through April of 1996. Under his direction, MSN was developed and launched and reached over one million paying members. Russell was also responsible for the formation of the Slate project, Microsoft's World Wide Web political and arts commentary. He recruited the editor, Michael Kinsley, and was the business manager in charge of Slate until he left Microsoft in July 1996.

Before Microsoft, Russell was a software engineer who wrote artificial intelligence applications for the financial services industry at Applied Expert Systems, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup, and was also an engineering consultant. He earned his BS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Physics in 1984 and an MBA from Harvard University where he was a Baker Scholar in 1989.