A.C. Ross

A.C. Ross has worked at the highest levels of management on all aspects of corporate strategy, technology product management, and business development in Silicon Valley since 1981.

At Indigo, where he is a co-founder and principal, A.C. focuses on helping companies use technology to identify, acquire, and retain their most profitable customers. He has helped Actuate, NTI, Symantec, Sun Microsystems, USF, and several startups identify the markets that would respond most favorably and profitably to their products, especially ones based upon new technologies. He co-founded two software companies and has helped startups raise funding from top-tier venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins, Accel Partners, and New Enterprise Associates.

He occasionally acts as an interim marketing executive for clients. He was the vice president of marketing and business development at HotDispatch and vice president of marketing at DiscoveryCast, Inc., and Be, Inc., He was a business unit manager and director of marketing at Sun Microsystems, a venture capital associate at U.S. Venture Partners, and a management consultant at Bain & Company.
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A.C. earned an SM in Management from MIT’s Sloan School and an SM in Chemical Engineering and an SB in Chemistry from MIT. He also served as an Armor officer in the U.S. Army for four years. He teaches entrepreneurship, business planning, and pitching to foreign executives and MBA students as an adjunct professor at Hult International Business School and the University of San Francisco.  He is the co-author of Advice Work If You Can Get It: How to sell and manage a professional consulting engagement and is finishing a book on how to pitch business plans to investors.
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