Bob Bausmith is an electrical 🏷️#engineer, enterprise systems architect, and angel 🏷️#investor who chairs the board of 📝SpokenLayer. He founded Accelerate Innovation, an advisory firm for startups and established companies pursuing technology-driven change, and as of 2026 has retired from leading it.
Bausmith began his career at IBM, moving from engineering into sales engineering for insurance clients, and later worked as a systems engineer at Computer Sciences Corporation. As vice president and chief enterprise systems architect at UnitedHealth Group in the early 2000s, he led the design of a service-oriented architecture for the company's technology platform, beginning with the member site MyUHC.com, and he later held a similar role at Aetna. After 2006 he turned to startups, serving as managing partner at Netsoft, later acquired by EPAM, and as founding chief technology officer of cancer-care software company Carevive Systems. He holds a BS in electrical engineering from Lehigh University, an MS in materials science from the University of Vermont, and three US patents, and he chairs the board of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra.
I know Bob through SpokenLayer, where he became the first non-family investor. He picked out its founder as a classic entrepreneur who makes great decisions about when to persist and when to pivot.