Clint Chao is a founding general partner at Formative Ventures. Clint invests in emerging technologies start-ups in areas, most recently focusing on web instrastructure and services. Clint is an experienced technology executive who brings more than 20 years of start-up operating experience including marketing, sales and business development to Formative Ventures. His investments and board leadership include Mashery, Marketocracy, Silicon Clocks, Smalltown, SOASTA, and Zyray Wireless (acquired by Broadcom in 2004).

Prior to co-founding Formative Ventures, Clint served as vice president of marketing, sales, and business development at SkyStream Networks (acquired by Tandberg TV), a leading provider of video routing equipment. Under his leadership, SkyStream formed partnerships with industry leaders such as AOL Time Warner, HP, Microsoft, RealNetworks, Lucent Technologies, Mitsubishi, and Philips.

Prior to joining SkyStream, Clint served as senior director of marketing at C-Cube Microsystems where he was responsible for marketing for the PC Division, a group he co-founded and grew to run rates exceeding $50M in sales annually. Clint began his tenure at C-Cube as the first salesperson for the company, where he created the company’s sales representation network around the country.

Before joining C-Cube in 1990, Clint held numerous sales and sales management positions at Motorola Semiconductor, where he was recognized as one of the company’s top salespeople.

Formative Ventures is a leading early-stage venture capital firm that invests in the industry's next-generation emerging technologies leaders in areas such as communications, wireless, and next-generation Internet solutions.  The founders of Formative Ventures believe that in today's tough environment, technology start-ups are looking for investors with “real-world” start-up experience, and in very specific areas such as sales and marketing processes, scaling an organization for revenue, or launching a product line.  That’s why they each have more than 20 years of "in the trenches" operational experience to complement their investment track records.     

Formative's general partners were key contributors during the formative, early revenue stages of market leading companies such as C-Cube Microsystems, Qualcomm, LSI Logic and Synopsys, where they were instrumental in leading their respective companies towards achieving major business, sales and marketing milestones.  As a result, FV’s general partners provide a very unique perspective in advising entrepreneurs on how to make the "life changing" decisions regarding their start-up businesses.  Recent investment successes by the firm include Zyray Wireless (acquired by Broadcom), IP Infusion (acquired by Access Corporation) and InnoCOMM Wireless (acquired by National Semiconductor).