Jon McNeill Advisory’s Board, Wasabi

Wasabi Technologies, Inc. appointed Jon McNeill, Lyft’s former COO and one-time president of global sales, marketing, delivery, and service for Tesla, to its advisory board.

He currently serves as CEO and co-founder of DVx Ventures, brings over 30 years of experience founding, scaling, and advising technology companies and will help guide Wasabi’s team through its growth stage in the public cloud landscape.

He has experience both as an entrepreneur – he has started and sold 5 companies – and in scaling disruptors in transportation (Lyft, where he served as COO) and the automotive industry (Tesla Motors, where he led all customer-facing operations). Prior to joining Tesla, he was the CEO of software company Enservio, and founder of multiple technology and retail companies including TrueMotion, Sterling, First Notice Systems and Trek Bicycle Stores Inc.

“The ability to easily and cheaply store and access data is a crucial foundation for solving critical business problems and unlocking the potential of many of the world’s great innovations and companies. Wasabi is enabling some of the most innovative companies to solve these problems by empowering real change through increased data accessibility and knowledge flow,” he said. “Wasabi is a rising star coming out of the Boston technology ecosystem – a market that is oft-overlooked among other tech hubs. I’m excited to help this next Boston tech success story through hyper-growth mode.“

Wasabi has experienced growth over the past year, reaching over 21,000 customers, surpassing 4,000 channel partners, and over 350 technology alliance partners. The company has also announced significant customer wins. Most recently, Hollywood production company, Legendary Entertainment, chose Wasabi as its centralized cloud storage environment. This comes on the heels of a $30 million fundraising round which was announced in spring 2020.

“Jon and I hit it off from the beginning. We have both started multiple companies, we have similar management styles, and are both biking enthusiasts. More importantly, though, Jon has been through the kind of large-scale hypergrowth that we are just entering. His experiences at both Tesla and Lyft are highly applicable to the challenges that we face. Like Wasabi, both Tesla and Lyft are playing into almost unlimited markets and Tesla, in particular, required building an enormous physical infrastructure that presented unique financial challenges. Building an infrastructure to store a sizable chunk of the world’s data presents similar challenges, and I know that Jon’s counsel will greatly benefit us,” said CEO and co-founder David Friend. “2020 has been another year of major growth for Wasabi with revenues nearly tripling. The WW cloud storage market is nearly infinite in size, and we intend to keep our foot to the floor. Jon’s experience will help us keep up with demand while maintaining our amazing low prices, super-fast speeds, and high reliability. We continue on our mission to make cloud storage an everyday utility like electricity.”

In addition to his role advising Wasabi, McNeill currently serves on the boards of lululemon, TrueMotion, Tekion and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston. He is the 2012 EY Entrepreneur of the Year and has been recognized as Most Admired CEO in Boston.