Crosspoint Capital Partners has added former Five9 and Cisco executive Panos Kozanian to its operating team, strengthening the cybersecurity-focused investment firm’s capabilities across AI, software engineering, product strategy and technical diligence.
Kozanian joins as an Operating Partner and will work with Crosspoint’s investment professionals and portfolio companies on AI strategy, engineering scale, platform architecture, innovation and technology evaluation.
He will also help portfolio companies make technology decisions, accelerate product development and turn emerging technologies into scalable commercial products.
Kozanian spent more than 14 years at Cisco, where he led the company’s emerging technologies incubation lab, which was tasked with identifying and developing potential billion-dollar businesses.
He also helped build Cisco’s collaboration software portfolio, including Webex. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kozanian helped scale Webex by 400% as demand surged, with the platform serving 95% of Fortune 500 companies.
He later served as Executive Vice President of Product Engineering at Five9.
There, Kozanian oversaw the company’s full technology stack, including product development, AI and machine learning, cloud operations and cybersecurity, and led a roughly 1,000-person global engineering organization spanning more than six countries.
At Five9, he helped develop an AI portfolio that grew to more than $100 million in revenue.
Kozanian also brings transaction experience, having led technical due diligence on more than $250 million of acquisitions.
His addition comes as Crosspoint looks to help portfolio companies navigate the impact of AI on cybersecurity, infrastructure software and product development.
KEY QUOTES:
“Panos has a rare ability to see a technology shift early, understand what it means for customers and then build the product, platform and organization required to capture it.”
Samir Kapuria, Managing Director at Crosspoint Capital Partners
“AI is changing the economics of software and the way great technology companies are built.”
Greg Clark, Managing Partner at Crosspoint Capital Partners
