Alexander Tamas serves as our Chairman and Chairman of our board of directors. Mr. Tamas, a German citizen, worked in the technology mergers and acquisitions group at Goldman Sachs in London before joining DST as Partner in 2008. At DST, he personally led and sourced some of the most important technology investments of that time, including leading early primary investments in Facebook, Airbnb, Spotify, Twitter, JD.com, Alibaba, Xiaomi and Zalando. He also helped to consolidate the Russian Internet sector around Mail.ru as its Managing Director and took the company public in 2010.
After leaving DST, Mr. Tamas founded Vy Capital with a vision of building a technology investment venture capital firm designed to invest in some of the world’s leading companies and own them for decades. Mr. Tamas is also the founder of numerous companies and initiatives, such as the venture-backed data science company, Synaptic, the Alexander Tamas Fellowship at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, a neuroscience research institute at Imperial College, and, together with Mr. Hering, Mr. Tamas helped to form a biosafety initiative in partnership with UCSF and CZ BioHub.
John Hering serves as our Chief Executive Officer and on our board of directors. Mr. Hering is also a founding Partner at Vy Capital. Mr. Hering has spent his entire career as a technology founder, entrepreneur, and investor. He co-founded Lookout, a leading global cybersecurity company. Lookout protects over 175 million devices globally and works with many of the largest organizations in the world including the US Department of Defense and the New Zealand Defense Force. Lookout is backed by over $380 million in venture capital from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Blackrock, T. Rowe Price, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Qualcomm. Mr. Hering served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer until March 2014, and he currently serves as a Co-Founder and Executive Director.
Mr. Hering also co-founded Coalition, a leading global cybersecurity insurance company. Partnered with leading global insurer Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, Coalition is the leading provider of cyber insurance and security, combining comprehensive insurance and proactive cybersecurity tools to help businesses manage and mitigate cyber risk. Coalition is backed by over $575 million in venture capital from leading investors including Durable Capital, General Atlantic, Hillhouse Capital, Ribbit Capital, and Vy Capital.
Mr. Hering is a prolific technologist and has co-authored 43 patents primarily in the fields of Cybersecurity, cloud, and mobile technologies. Mr. Hering studied Public Policy, Planning, and Development at the University of Southern California.
Our management team also includes Daniel Schwarz, our Chief Operating Officer, and Katja Lake, our Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Schwarz is the Chief Operating Officer and Director of Vy Capital. Prior to Vy Capital, Mr. Schwarz was a Director and investment advisor at UBS and served as the Head of Asset Management and member of the Asset Allocation Committee for a multi-billion private client bank. Mr. Schwarz started his career at Goldman Sachs. Mrs. Lake is the Chief Financial Officer and the Head of Investor Relations at Vy Capital. Prior to Vy Capital, Mrs. Lake was previously a Vice President at Deutsche Bank where she had served for over 20 years. During her tenure at Deutsche Bank, she held various senior fund structuring roles for private bank, international wealth management and institutional clients.
Our Investment and Operations Team
Vy Capital’s investment and operations team is led by the management team and includes the following key team members:
Vamsi Duvvuri is a Managing Director at Vy Capital and is the head of Vy Capital’s emerging market investments. He is currently a board observer at top growth-stage companies including Zomato, Upgrade and Urban Company. Prior to joining Vy Capital in 2013, Mr. Duvvuri worked as an equity research analyst at Religare Capital. Mr. Duvvuri received his BTech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and his MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
James Burgess is the Chief Technology Officer of Vy Capital and is responsible for information technology, cybersecurity, and technical diligence. He has spent the past 20 years as an entrepreneur and technologist, overseeing operational and engineering roles in the cloud, mobile, and security spaces. Prior to Vy Capital, Mr. Burgess was the co-founder and CIO of Lookout, a leading cybersecurity company protecting data, privacy, and mobile devices. At Lookout, Mr. Burgess was responsible for global infrastructure, technical operations, information security, data engineering, and corporate IT. His cybersecurity work has been recognized at top industry conferences including DEF CON and Black Hat, and he has co-authored over 25 patents in the field. Mr. Burgess graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.A. in Social Sciences, emphasis Economics.