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At Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Russell invests in software, electronic commerce, Web services, media and telecommunications. He is currently on the board of: Tradec, Vertical Networks and Vividence. Russell also leads other KPCB investments in: NewView, SS8, Veraz Networks and WildBlue Communications. Russell was involved in AdKnowledge, which was sold to CMG Inc. in November 1999; iExchange.com that became part of Placemark Investments in October 2000; Greenlight.com, which merged with CarsDirect.com in January 2001; pogo.com, which was sold to Electronic Arts in March 2001; and Resonate, which was acquired by Gores Technology Group in March 2003. Russell is also on the board of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, an independent public charity, as well as the non-profit organization Sustainable Conservation. Russell joined KPCB after seven years at Microsoft. At Microsoft he helped launch LAN Manager, Microsoft's first network operating system, then was the marketing manager in charge of Windows for Workgroups, a small-business networking version of Windows. For the first half of 1993, Russell worked directly for Bill Gates during which time he researched the online market and recommended an entry strategy for that market. This led to the formation the Microsoft Network (MSN), Microsoft's online service. Russell became the first employee of this division and became its General Manager and then Vice President through April of 1996. Under his direction, MSN was developed and launched and reached over 1 million paying members. Russell was also responsible for the formation of the Slate project, Microsoft's World Wide Web political and arts commentary. He recruited the editor, Michael Kinsley, and was the business manager in charge of Slate until he left Microsoft in July 1996. Before Microsoft, Russell was a software engineer who wrote artificial intelligence applications for the financial services industry at Applied Expert Systems, a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup, and was also an engineering consultant. He earned his SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Physics in 1984 and a MBA from Harvard University where he was a Baker Scholar in 1989 | 