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Rob Theis, a former general partner with DCM, has joined Scale Venture Partners as a managing director.

"He knows how to do exactly the kind of thing we like doing: helping companies think about their global strategy," said Kate Mitchell, a managing director with Scale. Theis has significant experience in helping companies open up new markets, she added, both as a venture capitalist and as an executive at Sun Microsystems Inc. and New Era of Networks Inc.

Scale is expected to begin raising another fund in mid-2008, according to an April 2007 story in Private Equity Analyst, which is published by VentureWire publisher Dow Jones & Co. Mitchell wouldn't comment on fund-raising plans, but she said Theis' hiring was not about building up the team in anticipation of a new fund.

"We've had the view the last few years that if we found someone we liked that fit our strategy, we would hire opportunistically," she said. Scale has worked with Theis on the boards of several companies since 2000, including JasperSoft Corp., a developer of open-source business intelligence software. At Scale, Theis will invest in both software and technology infrastructure companies. At DCM, where Theis spent eight years, his investments included NeoPath Networks Inc., a maker of file migration appliances that was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. last year; PGP Corp., a data encryption company; VanceInfo Technologies Inc., a software development outsourcing provider that went public late last year; Autonomic Networks Inc., a network access control company that has gone back into stealth mode to retool its products; and Jaspersoft.

Scale's most recent fund, Scale Venture Partners II LP, closed in 2005 with $400 million. The firm invests in mid- and late-stage companies in both life sciences and technology.

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