Subrah Iyar

Subrah Iyar is a veteran Silicon Valley technologist and entrepreneur best known as the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of WebEx Communications. Born June 11, 1957 in Bombay (Mumbai), India, he earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT-B) and later an M.S. from the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He began his career at Apple (1983–1989), where he helped create an early OS-licensing business in the Newton Group, followed by Intel (1989–1995), where he ran product marketing and OEM sales in the LAN software and systems group. He then served as president of Future Labs (a Quarterdeck subsidiary) and in sales/marketing leadership at Teleos Research before it was acquired by Autodesk.

In 1996 Iyar co-founded WebEx alongside Min Zhu, pioneering web-conferencing technology. He led the company as Chairman and CEO from 1997 through its 2000 IPO and its 2007 sale to Cisco Systems for approximately $3.2 billion — one of the defining enterprise-software exits of its era. After the acquisition he took a roughly six-year hiatus, spending time with his two daughters.

In 2012 Iyar returned to entrepreneurship, co-founding Moxtra (now Moxo) with former WebEx engineering leader Stanley Huang. Moxo is a digital client-interaction and workflow platform for service businesses, backed by strategic investors including Cisco and Japan's KDDI, where Iyar continues to serve as CEO. He has been recognized in the Immigrant Learning Center's entrepreneur Hall of Fame.

Alongside his operating roles, Iyar is an active angel investor and startup advisor. He is most notably an early investor in and advisor to Zoom Video Communications, and has taken advisory/board-observer roles at companies such as Tact.ai. In 2020 he became a founding investor in American Cricket Enterprises (ACE), the parent of Major League Cricket.

• Invests primarily at the pre-seed to early stage, writing personal angel checks generally in the $5K–$50K range (sweet spot ~$25K), sometimes participating in larger syndicated rounds.
• Strong bias toward enterprise, SMB, and collaboration/communications software — the domains where he built and scaled WebEx and Moxo.
• Backs founder-led technical teams; his own investments (Zoom, Aviso, Musely, Tact.ai) skew toward SaaS and productivity/AI-for-business models.
• Brings deep operator credibility as a two-time founder who took a company through IPO and a $3.2B acquisition — his value-add is enterprise go-to-market and scaling experience, not just capital.
• Occasionally makes conviction bets outside core tech (e.g., founding investment in Major League Cricket), reflecting a willingness to back category-creating ventures he believes in.