Paul Maritz

Paul Maritz is a retired technology executive turned active individual investor. Born March 16, 1955 in the former Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Zimbabwe) and raised in southern Africa, he earned a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Natal and a B.Sc. (Honours) in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town (1977). He began his career at Burroughs Corporation, did research at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and then spent roughly 1981–1986 at Intel building developer tools for the x86 platform.

In 1986 Maritz joined Microsoft, where he rose to become one of the company's most senior leaders — Executive Vice President of the Platforms Strategy and Developer Group and a member of the small executive committee under Bill Gates. He oversaw the teams behind Windows 95, Windows NT, Internet Explorer, Exchange, SQL Server and Microsoft's developer tools, and is credited with popularizing the term "dogfooding." He stepped back from his role in 1999 and left Microsoft in 2000.

After Microsoft, Maritz co-founded and led Pi Corporation, an early cloud/Linux software company (backed by Warburg Pincus) that was acquired by EMC in February 2008. He briefly ran EMC's cloud division before being named CEO of VMware on July 8, 2008, succeeding Diane Greene. During his tenure VMware's revenue roughly tripled before he handed the CEO role to Pat Gelsinger in September 2012. In 2013 he founded and became CEO of Pivotal Software (GoPivotal), a cloud-native enterprise software company spun out of EMC/VMware, leading it until 2015–2016 and later serving as Chairman of the Board.

Since stepping out of operating roles, Maritz has been an active angel investor (since 2008, in 20+ companies) and board member. He serves as Chairman of the Board of Acronis (a cybersecurity/data-protection company, since September 2021), sits on the board of quantum-computing company QuEra, and acts as an advisor to Sierra Ventures. He has also been deeply engaged in philanthropy, spending about a decade on the board of the Grameen Foundation (financial inclusion) and chairing the Mifos Initiative, and supports education and wildlife-conservation efforts in Africa.

• Invests as an individual angel at seed, angel and early venture rounds, with occasional later-stage participation; active investor since 2008 across 20+ companies.
• Broad focus on enterprise software, especially the application of cloud computing and machine learning to business problems — a natural extension of his Microsoft/VMware/Pivotal operating background.
• Backs frontier/deep technology where his platform experience adds value, including quantum computing (QuEra), industrial AI/analytics (Tignis), and cybersecurity/data protection (Acronis).
• Tends to take active board roles in companies he backs (e.g., QuEra, Tignis, BoldIQ, Kernel Labs), suggesting he prefers a hands-on, mentor-investor relationship over passive checks.
• Values strong technical founding teams building platform-level or developer-facing products — the categories he spent his career shipping at scale.