John Zagula, PARTNER
John is a partner at Ignition. He invests in enterprise software and services as well as end-user/consumer-facing companies. John represents Ignition as director on the board of Enclarity, Full Capture Solutions, Ice.com, N'Site Solutions, and Seamobile. He is a managing director of Qiming, Ignition's partner fund in China, and he also acts as Ignition observer on the board of MarketRange. John is also the co-author (along with Rich Tong) of the bestselling, acclaimed new book, The Marketing Playbook.
Prior to Ignition, John spent over 8 years at Microsoft in various senior marketing and strategy positions. As GM of Global Campaigns he was responsible for Microsoft's overall business-to-business communications across all business targets, products and offerings. In previous positions he was responsible for the development of the Microsoft Office brand and marketing the desktop and server applications product lines. He contributed to the original competitive wins of Word and Excel and the re-positioning of desktop applications into Office. This included the launches of every version of Office and all of its component applications and its growth from a $50 MM to a nearly $10 billion business and from 20% to 85% market share. John's other contributions and responsibilities at Microsoft included the company's most successful online marketing campaigns; its first use of internet banners and email; the establishment of a database marketing practice; and an ongoing marketing and business strategy training curriculum.
Before Microsoft, John was a marketing manager at American Express in International Business Development, Customer Acquisition and Retention. John was also an associate at International Data Corporation where he wrote the first industry whitepaper on the Desktop Publishing Industry.
John holds a Masters in International Economics and Monetary Theory from the Fletcher School (Harvard/Tufts), BA (magna cum laude) from Marquette University and a Fulbright Scholarship at Universität zu Köln.
For more on John and his interests see Zagula Spells...; for his and others' reflections on business and marketing topics see the Marketing Playbook and on technology see Geekfishing.