Mike Cassidy

Mike Cassidy was recently the CEO of Apollo Fusion, Inc. and a Vice President at Google. He was the Project Leader of GoogleX’s Project Loon (balloon-powered Internet for everyone). Mike was the co-founder and CEO of five start-ups, all of which were successfully acquired: Apollo Fusion, Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation.

Apollo Fusion designs and builds ion thrusters for satellites and was acquired by Astra for $145 million. Ruba helped travelers share their favorite places and was acquired by Google. Xfire allows gamers to play online with their friends and was acquired by MTV for $110 million. Direct Hit was a revolutionary search engine whose customers included MSN, Lycos, AOL, etc., and was acquired by IAC’s Ask.com for $500 million. Stylus Innovation’s flagship product was the computer telephone software Visual Voice. Artisoft acquired Stylus for $13M.

Mike has a BS/MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT. He graduated from Harvard Business School. He studied jazz piano at Berklee College of Music. He has been an advisor to Endeavor.org, StartX, Tim Berners-Lee’s WebFoundation, From the Top, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and over 300 startup companies. He has four patents.

He was selected for the DEMO Lifetime Achievement Award, nominated for a Webby award, named a Forbes E-gang Trendsetter, and won the Berklee College of Music Outstanding Alumni award. His startup products have won PC Magazine’s Top 100 Websites, Computer Telephony Product of the Year, CNET Editor’s Choice, PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice, Via Satellite’s Top 5 Satellite Technologies of the Year, and many other awards.