John W. Thompson, CEO of Virtual Instruments, topped Business Insider's list of "Most Influential Blacks in Technology."
From Business Insider:
During Thompson's senior year at Florida A&M University, he joined IBM as a sales representative. He ended up staying for 28 years, and eventually rose to become general manager of IBM Americas.
In 1999, Thompson got an offer from Symantec that he couldn't turn down: the chance to be president and chief executive officer of the cloud security giant. He eventually retired in 2009, but started investing in early-stage startups.
Cloud computing startup Virtual Instruments was one of them. In 2009, Thompson joined Virtual Instruments' board of directors, and stepped in as CEO in 2010. He only intended to stay for a few months, but investors would only finance the company if Thompson stayed on board as CEO.