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Pete Sonsini is an American Venture Capitalist based in the Silicon Valley area of California. Sonsini is recognized for his ventures in the Enterprise Software sector. In 2011, Sonsini was named a "Rising Star" of the next generation of venture capital general partners by Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst. Sonsini is currently on the board of directors of: Apprenda, Inc., BeachMint, Conviva Inc., Embrane, Engine Yard, Inc., Eucalyptus Systems, Lithium Technologies, Inc., MapR Technologies, Inc., Splashtop, Tintri, Inc. and Viddy. Sonsini was named to Business Insider’s ‘50 Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech’ for 2012.

Business Career
Sonsini joined New Enterprise Associates (NEA) in 2005, where he is currently a member of the investing staff as a General Partner. Prior to joining NEA, Sonsini served as Senior Director of Strategic Alliances at VMware- where he was instrumental during the company's formative stage and led the increase of OEM sales from $0 to $40 million in four years. Sonsini was a Product Manager for start up Mirapoint; at Hewlett-Packard he worked in several sales and marketing positions in the server division including Worldwide Product Manager for the mid range server business. He began his career in investment banking as an Associate at Montgomery Securities in the firm's Technology Corporate Finance group.

Career at NEA
Sonsini co-leads the EIS (Enterprise, Infrastructure, Services) practice group. His investment focuses are information technology and consumer internet technology, including software, systems and enterprise, infrastructure and services companies. Sonsini previously led NEA investments in Xensource (acquired by Citrix Systems) and Teracent (acquired by Google).

Education
Sonsini received a master’s degree in business administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree in Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley.

Other Activities
Sonsini is on the board for the Software Development Forum, and had been involved with Launch: Silicon Valley. Sonsini has been on Business Insider’s ‘50 Most Powerful People in Enterprise Tech’ list, and Business Insider’s Silicon Valley 100- a compilation of notable individuals in the Silicon Valley that is established annually. At U.C. Berkeley, Sonsini was a letterman (sports) in varsity Rugby and was a member of the California Golden Bears national championship team.