Paul Ahlstrom – Managing Director

Paul Ahlstrom, Managing Director and co-founder of Alta Ventures Mexico a venture capital fund focused in Mexico. In 2000, Mr. Ahlstrom co-founded vSpring Capital, Utah’s leading venture capital fund. In 2007, Mr. Ahlstrom co-founded Alta Growth Capital, based in Mexico City and Kickstart Seed Fund based in Salt Lake City.

Over his career, Mr. Ahlstrom has directly participated in more than 90 venture capital investments and represented vSpring Capital on the boards of Ancestry.com which was sold in 2007 to a private equity firm and went public in 2009 (NASDAQ:ACOM), GlobalSim, which was sold to Kongsberg Maritime (KOG – Oslo Stock Exchange), Senforce, which was sold to Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL), and Altiris (NASDAQ:ATRS), which went public and was then sold to Symantec. (NASDAQ: SYMC). Mr. Ahlstrom has also served on the boards of many successful venture back startups including Rhomobile, Public Engines www.crimereports.com, Aeroprise, 7degrees, The American Academy and FamilyLink

In addition to fund creation and investment experience, Mr. Ahlstrom has direct entrepreneurial and operating experience, having personally founded multiple startups. Prior to founding vSpring Capital in 2000, Mr. Ahlstrom was founder and CEO of Knowlix Inc., a Knowledge Management IT company which raised venture capital financing from Dominion Ventures and UV Partners in 1998. Ahlstrom led the sale of Knowlix to Peregrine Systems in 1999 which was in turn sold to Hewlett Packard (NYSE: HPQ).

Mr. Ahlstrom is a Founding Member of the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology and currently serves on the executive committee and board for the University of Utah’s Technology Commercialization Office which is ranked number one in university generated spinouts in the United States. Mr. Ahlstrom previously served as trustee for the Utah Technology Council and other community boards and has also served multiple years as a member of Motorola Corporation’s Visionary Research Board, (NYSE: MOT).

Mr. Ahlstrom earned his B.A. in Communications from Brigham Young University. Mr. Ahlstrom has also received an honorary doctorate from the Netanya Academic College in Netanya Israel.