Steve Adelman

Mr. Adelman is a Silicon Valley founder coach, seasoned entrepreneur, and investor. In addition to playing key roles in multiple startups (including one that exited to Cisco) he has started or managed corporate venture funds at Reuters, Novell, and Palm, been an angel investor over thirty years, and has coached thousands of founders on every continent. As Founder and Managing Director of Nexus Partners, Mr. Adelman leads a consultancy that empowers entrepreneurs, executives, and policymakers to build thriving innovation networks grounded in Silicon Valley’s best practices. In addition to leading Nexus Partners, he directs the Wharton School’s San Francisco Accelerator Program and previously led the Lean Startup Accelerator at Citrix. He has advised accelerators and government innovation agencies across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, shaping programs that help founders launch, scale, and build globally competitive ventures. In parallel, as the Director of VIP-X/SF, the Wharton School’s San Francisco startup accelerator for the past fifteen years, Mr. Adelman has worked with alumni and student founders from the University of Pennsylvania. Program alumni have had four major exits and have raised $100’s of millions of funding. In 2024 Mr. Adelman joined Mr. Burry and others in launching the Global Innovation Dojo. The Dojo combines the global experience of the past two decades working with founders with the Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship in order to help great founders – who in turn create great companies and build strong entrepreneurial ecosystems. Previously in his career, Mr. Adelman held senior roles with Gartner Consulting, Booz Allen & Hamilton, and The MAC Group (Gemini Consulting), and executive positions including Vice President of Corporate Development at Novell and Executive Vice President at Reuters NewMedia. He began his career at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories.