Rich Tong, PARTNER
Rich is a founding partner of Ignition. He invests in telecommunications and wireless as well as end-user/consumer-facing companies. Rich is a director on the boards of mFoundry, Melodeo, Mpire, Seamobile, and lala. Rich is also a managing director of Qiming, Ignition's partner fund in China. He is an Ignition observer on the boards of Judy's Book, and Network Magic.
Prior to Ignition, Rich spent 12 years at Microsoft where he most recently served as Vice President of Marketing for MS Office and BackOffice. He was responsible for business branding, advertising and pricing for the MS Office and BackOffice family of products, contributing to a $2 billion revenue stream and driving Windows NT and Exchange to become #1 in Microsoft's unit sales. He oversaw the purchase and integration of over 20 different companies and technologies into the Microsoft enterprise software family.
Rich built and led the marketing teams for Windows, NT, Exchange, SQL Server, BackOffice and Internet server, and managed over 250 people. His team's efforts catapulted Windows from a $50 million to $500 million business in two years. He also developed key business partnerships with Lotus, Intel, 3Com, Compaq, Dell and others.
Rich is also the co-author (along with John Zagula) of the book, The Marketing Playbook.
Rich received his MBA and MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He received his B.S., summa cum laude, in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Princeton University.
For more information on Rich and his interests, see the Tong Family Blog; for his and others' reflections on business and marketing topics see the Marketing Playbook and on technology see Geekfishing.