Cliff Reeves leads the Community team in Microsoft Ventures. The Community team builds working partnerships between Microsoft and the leading startup accelerators around the world , and manages over 100 Microsoft Innovation Centers – focused on students and entrepreneurism in partnership with local government, industry and academia – worldwide. At Microsoft since 2001, Cliff initially headed product management for Windows Server. He subsequently led the team that developed Microsoft BizSpark, a program that has supported about 80,000 startups since its launch in Nov 2008. Cliff has 30 years of experience in the software industry. He started with IBM Corp. as a programmer in England and has held a wide range of software-product-development roles in the areas of database, application development, communication, and messaging systems. He was an influential figure in the industry adoption of object technology and was most recently the senior vice president of Knowledge Management at Lotus Development Corp. Cliff was closely involved with IBM’s acquisition of Lotus Development in 1995, and joined Lotus as VP of product management in 1996. Reeves is married and has two daughters. He holds a master’s degree in business administration from Southern Methodist University.
