Bob Kelly is a managing partner at Ignition. Bob joined Ignition in 2017, bringing more than 20 years of experience with him from Microsoft where he held a variety of positions, most recently holding the position of Corporate Vice President for the Cloud + Enterprise Business Development and Strategy team where he drove the merger and acquisition strategy and coordination of of cross-division strategic planning. During his tenure, Bob played an integral leadership role in defining how Microsoft goes to market with server and cloud computing, and was instrumental in growing the Windows Server business from a relatively new product to a market leader, and helping to shape Microsoft’s $20+ billion server and tools business. He was also instrumental in the early days of Microsoft Azure, helping it grow into one of the industry’s leading cloud platforms.
Bob is a member of the board of directors of Trifacta, Shyft Skytap, and Amplero. He is very active in the startup community as an investor and a mentor both in Seattle and San Francisco, and serves on the board of advisors at 9Mile Labs, a Seattle-based accelerator.He holds a master’s degree and doctorate in English literature from the University of Dallas, and a bachelor of arts in Liberal Arts and Sciences from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.