What makes a great Mentor?

They are founders of one or more successful technology startups and have been through the same thing you’re going through.  They enjoy spending time with other entrepreneurs and thinking about different businesses.

They have a huge network of customers, vendors and employees they can introduce you to. They’re really busy, but make time to meet with you every week and are responsive to your emails and calls.

John Eitel | @Johneitel

John Eitel has been a driving force behind the growth of Rackspace Managed Hosting into one of the world¹s leading providers of cloud computing products and services.  John has provided the sales vision and strategic leadership that has been pivotal to the company¹s revenue growth from $15 million to more than $1 billion today.  Over his tenure, John has progressed through multiple positions of increased responsibility and scope based on his consistent record of top-tier sales performance, as both a manager and individual contributor.  As a result, he has been tapped to lead a number of high-level initiatives, which include turning around one of the poorest performing sales teams in the country,  building a large-enterprise sales unit from the ground floor,  and leading a newly established open-cloud business unit that has revolutionized the delivery and consumption of high-performance computing services.

John was recently promoted to Vice President of Corporate Strategy and Business Development at Rackspace, where he is tasked with furthering the company¹s cloud computing mission. With a primary focus on Database as a Service (DBaaS) and Big Data in the Cloud, John leads a variety of business and corporate development activities, which include negotiating strategic business partnerships and identifying and executing acquisitions or investments consistent with the company¹s long-term vision.  He was instrumental in the recent acquisition of ObjectRocket, an open-source, cloud based database platform provider, where he managed the post-merger integration and has been retained to lead the Sales and Business Development team.

Follow John on Twitter!