Team details

About Mike Cassidy

Mike is currently the CEO of D-Orbit USA.  Mike is also currently the CEO of Vulcan Fusion.  Mike has been the Co-Founder and CEO of five start-ups: Apollo Fusion, Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation.

Apollo Fusion designed and built a type of ion thruster for space propulsion and was acquired by Astra for $150 million. Ruba helped travelers share their favorite places and was acquired by Google. Xfire helps gamers play online with their friends and was acquired by MTV for $110 million. Direct Hit was a revolutionary search engine whose customers included Microsoft, Lycos, AOL, etc., and was acquired by Ask .com for $500 million. Stylus Innovation’s flagship product was computer telephony software Visual Voice. Artisoft acquired Stylus for $13M.

Mike was also previously a Vice President at Google and was the Project Leader for 5 years of GoogleX Project Loon (balloon-powered Internet for everyone).

Mike has a BS/MS in Aerospace Engineering from MIT. He graduated from Harvard Business School. He studied jazz piano at Berklee College of Music. He has been an advisor to From the Top, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Endeavor.org, and over 300 startup companies. He was selected for the DEMO Lifetime Achievement Award, Berklee College of Music Outstanding Alumni Award, nominated for a Webby award, and named a Forbes E-gang Trendsetter. His startup products have won PC Magazine’s Top 100 Websites, Computer Telephony Product of the Year, CNET Editor’s Choice, PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice, Via Satellite’s Top 5 Satellite Technologies of the Year, and many other awards.