G Felda Hardymon

Felda Hardymon is MBA Class of 1975 Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, where he teaches Venture Capital and Private Equity, and is a Senior Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners, a global first-tier venture firm. Felda graduated from Rose Polytechnic Institute with a degree in mathematics. He attended Duke University, where he earned a Ph.D. in mathematics and remained at Duke to teach, eventually serving as Duke's Director of Systems and Research. He left Duke, and an academic career, to attend HBS (MBA '79, Baker Scholar), and in 1979 joined Business Development Services, Inc. (BDSI), the venture capital subsidiary of General Electric. At BDSI Felda became a Vice President and was an investor in the start-up of Stratus Computer (the second fault-tolerant computer company, later sold to Ascend), the turnaround of Western Digital (a communications chip company, later to become a disk drive company), and the growth financing of Ungermann-Bass (the first local-area network company, later sold to Newbridge Networks). Felda joined Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP) as a general partner in 1981. BVP is among the oldest venture firms (founded 1911) with offices on Route 128, Larchmont (NY), Silicon Valley, Shanghai (PRC), Bangalore and Mumbai (India). BVP invests approximately $250 million annually worldwide and has over $3 billion under management. At BVP Felda has led BVP's investment in a number of young companies in the software, communications and retail sectors, including American Superconductor, Cascade Communications (acquired by Ascend), Celcore Communications Corp (acquired by DSC), Sahara Networks (acquired by Cascade), Parametric Technology Corp, Metapath Software International (acquired by Marconi), Sirocco Networks (acquired by Sycamore), LBMS (acquired by Platinum Technology), Wavesmith (acquired by Ciena), Celtel International (acquired by MTC), VideoServer (now called Ezenia) and Endeca. His investments in the start-ups of The Sports Authority and Staples were the initial investments for BVP's retail practice. He served on the Board of Directors of the National Venture Capital Association for a number of years in the 90's where he was Chairman of the Tax Committee. Felda joined the HBS faculty in 1998, and with Josh Lerner developed the second-year MBA elective Venture Capital and Private Equity. He teaches in--and has been course head for--the Private Equity and Venture Capital Executive Education program held each fall. In Winter 2009 and Winter 2010 he will be teaching the first-year required course: The Entrepreneurial Manager. In addition to his teaching duties, Felda continues to serve as a partner of BVP and is currently active with eight investments. He serves on seven private company boards as well as on the board of directors of Silicon Valley Bancshares (NASDAQ:SIVB). He advises several Venture Capital and Private Equity firms by sitting on investment committees and LP advisory boards.