John Shoch
John F. Shoch is an American computer scientist and venture capitalist who made significant contributions to the development of computer networking while at Xerox PARC, in particular to the development of the PARC Universal Protocol (PUP), an important predecessor of TCP/IP.
John F. Shoch, PhD, became a venture capitalist in 1985, first working with Craig Taylor to manage venture investments at Asset Management Associates, and then co-founding Alloy Ventures in 1996. At Alloy, he focuses on investments in enterprise software, communications infrastructure, semiconductors and all aspects of the Internet.
Operating experience
Before becoming a venture capitalist, John worked as a computer scientist, technology executive and inventor. He gained deep hands-on, operational experience at Xerox, which he joined in 1971. For many years, he worked at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he helped develop the Ethernet, a local area network system. In 1980, he became the assistant to the CEO of Xerox. In 1982, John became President of the Office Systems Division, developing networked office systems derived from Xerox PARC research. John received a BA (1971) in Political Science, an MS (1977), and a PhD (1979) in Computer Science, all from Stanford.
Past Board Seats
John was previously a director of semiconductor firm Conductus, which was acquired by Superconductor Technologies Inc. in 2002; and Remedy, a leading enterprise software company that completed a successful IPO on NASDAQ in 1995 and was later acquired by Peregrine Systems. John also served on the board of Polimetrix (acquired by YouGov in 2007) and MontaVista (acquired by Cavium Networks in 2009) and Knowledge Networks (acquired by GfK in 2012).