Joseph Zell

Joe Zell, retired from Grotech Ventures after over 18 years with the firm in 2020. Joe had joined Grotech Ventures in 2002 as a General Partner where he made investments in the IT infrastructure, security, cloud services, mobile, networking, and internet and digital media sectors. During that period, he was a general partner in five funds with approximately $1 billion in total under management. He made 22 venture investments and sat on 25 boards. Prior to Grotech, Joe had a 20 year operating career, including as CEO of Convergent Communications, a small publicly traded company, was a director on the board of Copper Mountain Networks, a NASDAQ listed company, spent nine years with US West Communications (then Centurylink and now Lumen) where he was instrumental in growing their data networking division from startup to $2.5 billion in annual revenue (and served as President of the division for the last four years when it grew from $300 million to $2.5 billion in annual revenue). Prior to US West, he held a variety of management positions at WilTel and LDXNet, United Technologies Communications, MCI Communications and Xerox Corporation. He currently serves on the Colorado Board of Trustees for The Nature Conservancy and acts as an advisor to a small venture seed fund (Stout Street Capital) and one startup company named Rarewaters.