Dixon Doll, Sr. is an independent advisor and private investor. For more than 40 years, he has influenced and guided entrepreneurs, investors and executives in the computer, communications, and internet industries.
Early in his career, Mr. Doll founded and ran a strategic technology consulting firm and served on the faculty of the IBM Systems Research Institute in NYC for 10 years. He is former Director of DIRECTV, as well as former Chairman of Network Equipment Technologies.
In the mid 1980s while at Accel Partners, Mr. Doll co-founded the VC industry's first fund focused on telecom, investing in such noteworthy companies as Alantec, Bridge Communications, Centillion Networks, Network Equipment Technologies, Optilink, Picturetel, Polycom, and UUNet.
Following his tenure at Accel, Mr. Doll founded DCM, formerly (Doll Capital Management), where he built a top global VC firm with offices in Silicon Valley, Beijing, and Tokyo. DCM is widely regarded as the first Silicon Valley venture firm to successfully invest in China, Japan, and the US. Mr. Doll led DCM Ventures' investments in About.com (Acquired by NYT), Clearwire (Nasdaq: CLWR), @Motion (Acquired by Openwave), Coradiant (Acquired by BMC), Force10 Networks (Acquired by Dell), Foundry Networks (Nasdaq: FDRY), Internap (Nasdaq: INAP), Ipivot (Acquired by Intel), and Neutral Tandem (Nasdaq: TNDM).
His diverse experience also includes strategy consulting, teaching, authoring two books, regular Bloomberg Television appearances, economic policy leadership, serving on public boards like DirecTV, non-profit fundraising, TED Talks, and innovative philanthropic accomplishments.
An expert in his field, Mr. Doll published the seminal book titled Data Communications which was adopted as course text by 60+ universities.
Mr. Doll was named to the Forbes Midas List for four consecutive years and received the 2013 Special Achievement Award in VC from the International Business Forum. He was elected to the Board of the National Venture Capital Association in 2005 serving on the Executive Committee and as Chairman in 2008/9. Under Mr. Doll’s leadership, the NVCA developed a widely embraced set of recommendations (NVCA 4-Pillar Plan) to stimulate liquidity in the U.S. venture capital industry. This plan resulted in bipartisan Congressional support for new job creation legislation and simplification of the IPO process for young emerging companies. Known as the JOBS Act, President Obama signed it into law in 2012. For these, and other
accomplishments, Dixon was recently named the recipient of the 2021 NVCA
Lifetime Achievement in Venture Capital award.
Dr. Doll is currently an Advisory Board Member and Vice Chairman of the Stanford
Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) board. He also serves on the boards
of Catholic Information Services (CIS), the Papal Foundation, the Asian Art Museum
of San Francisco, the San Francisco Opera Association, and the University of San
Francisco, where he chairs the Investment Committee.
Executive with significant M&A, capital markets, and SPAC transaction experience