Derek Proudian is a Silicon Valley venture investor, start-up CEO, and entrepreneur.

He has served as the CEO of six venture-capital backed companies. Mr. Proudian has worked as a general partner at the venture capital firm Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV), a venture partner at Morgan Stanley Ventures, and as an R&D manager at Hewlett-Packard Labs. As a general partner at MDV he was part of a team credited with delivering $3.5 billion in returns to limited partners from an initial $225 million investment.

As a founding board member, Mr. Proudian has helped shepherd a number of companies to highly successful exits on behalf of founders and shareholders, including: mSpot, which was sold to Samsung in 2012; Daintree Networks, which was sold to General Electric in 2016; SquareTrade, which was sold to Allstate in January 2017; and Newtrax Technologies, which was sold to Sandvik AB in June 2019.

He received a BS in Cognitive Science, a BA in Creative Writing, an MS in Computer Science, and an MBA from Stanford University.