David Tennenhouse
Global R&D Executive | Technology Innovator | Strategist
San Francisco Bay Area
Skills
Education
Work Experience
Visiting Scholar
2025
Senior Advisor
2023
Expert
2022 - 2023
Nonresident Scholar
2022
Embedded Entrepreneur
2022
2022
Strategic Advisor
2022
Strategic Advisor / Angel Investor
2022
2014 - 2022
SVP, Chief Research Officer
2014 - 2022
Created world-class, geographically distributed research and incubation organization that is differentiated by its focus on the needs of enterprise customers. Established VMware as a thought leader and elevated its strategic importance with valuable public sector customers, especially in defense and national security. ► Launched VMware’s blockchain business and incubated new products/services/businesses with differentiated enterprise value propositions related to Containers, SD-WAN, IoT, ARM virtualization, and non-volatile storage. ► Novel, highly-regarded research transferred to product teams: Enterprise-Grade Machine Learning; Declarative Control Planes; Incremental Computation (streaming databases); Key-Value Stores; and Tiered Memory. ► Strategic partnerships with the National Science Foundation and elite university researchers.
2012 - 2014
Corporate Vice President, Technology Policy
2012 - 2014
Led the team that identified looming policy challenges and used emerging technologies to address them. Examples include spectrum-sharing, privacy, environmental sustainability, and rural connectivity. Influential in driving focused policy engagements with governments and global institutions. Sensitized key executives to the notion that "regulation can sometimes be our friend."
2007 - 2012
Partner
2007 - 2012
New Venture Partners was the recognized leader in the creation of spinouts from R&D organizations. Established and developed the firm's West Coast office. Forged relationships with potential sources of spinouts and local venture firms. Evaluated hundreds of new investment opportunities. Led negotiations of spinout transactions and was closely involved with several transactions that led to positive exits and/or an IPO.
2006 - 2007
CEO, A9.com & VP, Amazon.com
2006 - 2007
As CEO of A9.com (through 08/06) owned advertising-based P&L and led Amazon.com subsidiary with offices in Palo Alto and Bangalore. A9.com was the developer and operator of Amazon's product search engine and search advertising. Created the business plan to pivot key parts of the business to retail search/advertising, which is now a $7B/quarter (and growing) business.