James Lussier

Jim Lussier is the Founder and Managing Partner of The Coast Ridge Group, an advisory and investment firm he started after leaving Dell in 2016 to help entrepreneurs, corporate/financial investors, and executives in emerging technology. The firm is built around his roughly 30-year track record as a corporate investment-group leader, VC general partner, board member, entrepreneur, general manager, and strategy-consulting practice leader.

Most recently before founding Coast Ridge, he served as Managing Director and Head of Dell Technologies Capital (formerly Dell Ventures), which he joined in 2011. There he led Dell's company-wide investing activity — setting strategy, building the team and processes, and managing the portfolio. He launched Dell's $300 million Strategic Innovation Venture Fund and oversaw investments in 25+ companies and ~12 venture funds across storage, data center, cloud, big data/analytics, security, and mobile. He was named to Global Corporate Venturing's Powerlist (the "Powerlist 100") multiple times, including 2014 and 2016.

Before Dell, Jim spent more than a decade as a General Partner at Norwest Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley VC firm (cited at ~$3.7B under management during his tenure), focused on software, services, and consumer/internet companies. Earlier in his career he held VP/GM roles at Beyond.com and led Accenture's (then Andersen Consulting) electronics and high-technology strategy practice for North America. He has also served as an Advisor / Investment Committee member at Keiretsu Capital and Formation Data Systems.

He holds a B.S. in Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (mid-1980s).

• Invests at seed and early stages in emerging-technology companies, drawing on a corporate-VC and institutional-VC background.
• Core sector interest is enterprise and infrastructure technology — storage, data center, cloud, big data/analytics, security, and mobile — the same themes he backed at Dell Technologies Capital.
• Coast Ridge frames its value around governance, board/advisory work, corporate development, partnerships, and fundraising strategy, so he tends to favor founders who want a hands-on operator/board partner, not just capital.
• His firm's stated mission is to help "entrepreneurs, corporate and financial investors and executives in emerging technology to be more successful" — a strategist/advisor-investor posture rather than a high-volume check-writer.