Michael Baum

Investor

Splunk, Collation, dotBank and Reality

Splunk, Collation, dotBank and Reality

I want to invent something cool.

Splunk

Rewarding: Seeing lots of people using your stuff.
Frustrating: Figuring out how to get your stuff to lots of people.

Striving to do only something better when only something different will create the large opportunity they seek

Enjoy the ride more often
Raise more money than you think you'll need
Spread the equity evenly among founding team members

Michael is a technology innovator and entrepreneur who knows how to build great companies, create and win markets, and assemble "A-Player" teams. He is currently an advisor and board participant at Loggly, Mu Dynamics, NewTree, Rezopia and Veloxum.

Prior to joining Rembrandt, Michael was Founder and CEO of Splunk, the "big data" software company that invented new ways to make sense of large-scale machine data. As CEO, he built a diverse and passionate team that quickly grew Splunk from an idea to a $50M, pre-IPO company, and one of the fastest growing private software companies in Silicon Valley.

Under Michael's leadership, Splunk raised $50M in venture funding, recruited a global team of more than 250 employees and developed and executed a game changing, consumer approach to enterprise marketing and sales -- achieving six straight years of 100%+ growth. Splunk is now the industry standard for machine data management with more 2,600 enterprise, service provider and government agency customers in 78 countries around the world. Industry partners like BT, Cisco, F5, Salesforce.com and Verizon Business have integrated Splunk into their own products and services.

In 2008 the company won the award for Deloitte's fastest growing rising stars in Silicon Valley and has been recognized as one of the top places to work in the Bay Area.

Before Splunk, Michael co-founded Collation (acquired by IBM), dotBank (acquired by Yahoo!) and Reality (acquired by Reuters). In addition to Internet and IT infrastructure, Michael has been a pioneer in e-commerce serving as VP e-Commerce Services at Yahoo! and VP e-Commerce at InfoSeek/Disney where he oversaw the development of the Disney Internet Group shopping platform and services. 

Michael holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he played hooker with the Wharton Rugby Club, was President of the Venture Capital Association and now judges business plan competitions. He also earned a BS in Computer Science from Drexel University where he worked as a co-op student and software engineer on the original IBM PC at IBM's Entry Systems Division and on advanced complier technology at IBM's Silicon Valley lab.

When Michael is not working to help entrepreneurs build great companies, he loves hiking, snowboarding, surfing and hanging out with his twin boys.