Mike Abbott was the Executive Vice President, Software for

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

. He was formerly the vice president of Apple's Cloud Services team. He also previously worked as a general partner at

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Kleiner Perkins, formerly Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), is an American venture capital firm which specializes in investing in incubation, early stage and growth companies. Since its founding in 1972, the firm has backed entrepreneur ...

, vice president of engineering at

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

, team lead for Azure at Microsoft and senior vice president of apps and services at Palm.

Early life and education

Raised in

Saratoga, California Saratoga is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Located in Silicon Valley, in the southern Bay Area, it had a population of 31,051 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. Saratoga is known for its wineries, restaurant ...

, Abbott earned a

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

in 1994 from

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly San Luis Obispo or Cal Poly) is a public university in San Luis Obispo County, California, United States, - Cites the location of the university and shows that the university ...

and has completed coursework towards a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

Career

Abbott began his career in 1994 as a research associate at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is a nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California, United States. It was established in 1946 by trustees of Stanford Univer ...

. After spending a year and a half working towards his PhD at the University of Washington, Abbott returned to the workforce as a research scientist with GeneTrace Systems. He then served as an architect/director at

USWeb USWeb was an interactive design agency founded in 1995 by former Novell Novell, Inc. () was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the m ...

and VP of

Engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

and Chief Technical Officer at Electron Economy. In 2001, Abbott started Composite Software (acquired by

Cisco Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, s ...

), a data virtualization company, from his home office. He would then go on the co-found Passenger before serving as General Manager of

Microsoft's Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

.NET services and later leading the

webOS webOS, also known as LG webOS, is a Linux kernel-based multitasking operating system for smart devices, such as smart TVs, that has also been used as a mobile operating system. Initially developed by Palm, Inc. (which was acquired by Hewlett ...

software development team at

Palm Palm most commonly refers to: * Palm of the hand, the central region of the front of the hand * Palm plants, of family Arecaceae ** List of Arecaceae genera **Palm oil * Several other plants known as "palm" Palm or Palms may also refer to: Music ...

. In May 2010, Abbott joined

as Vice President of Engineering. At Twitter, Abbott is credited with rebuilding and solidifying Twitter's infrastructure, growing the engineering team from 80 to more than 350 engineers in less than a year and a half, and scaling Twitter's architecture to support hundreds of millions of daily tweets. After a short stint at

Benchmark Capital Benchmark is a venture capital firm founded in 1995 by Bob Kagle, Bruce Dunlevie, Andy Rachleff, Kevin Harvey, and Val Vaden. The firm is known for its equal partnership structure and focus on early-stage investing, typically leading the firs ...

, Abbott joined Kleiner Perkins as a partner on its digital team in December 2011. In 2017, Mike Abbott announced that he was leaving his role of general partner at Kleiner Perkins. Kleiner Perkins partner Ted Schlein said that Mike Abbott left the firm because he "wanted to go back and be an engineer". In February 2018, Abbott joined Apple. He left Apple in March 2023. In May 2023, Abbott joined General Motors. He resigned from that role in March 2024 due to health concerns.

References

California Polytechnic State University alumni Twitter, Inc. people American venture capitalists Living people 20th-century births People from Saratoga, California Kleiner Perkins people Year of birth missing (living people) {{US-compu-bio-stub