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Musical chairs in Silicon Valley’s venture
world: Theis, Brown, Lisbonne, Marshall
Industry Standard
By Matt Marshall
May 8, 2008
Four venture capital personnel moves:
Robert Theis, a venture capitalist who left Silicon Valley firm
DCM last year after serving for eight years, has joined Scale Venture
Partners, also in Silicon Valley, as managing director. Thies will
focus on investment in "technology infrastructure and applications." At
DCM, Theis invested in companies PGP, Roamware, NeoPath (acquired
by Cisco) and the now-public VanceInfo. We're not certain why things
didn't work out at DCM (all sides say something different), but
it's true that DCM has focused more on investments in Asia of late,
and a refitting was needed. Previously, Theis was an executive
at New Era of Networks (NEON), and before that spent a decade at
Sun Microsystems.
Erika Brown, a long-time reporter at Forbes covering venture capital,
is leaving to join venture capital firm Matrix Partners‘ office
in Silicon Valley, where she will be director of marketing and
business development (see her Facebook message). She told me she'll
serve the firm in a number of roles, for example helping market
portfolio companies, but also providing research on what companies
to invest in, including due diligence. Brown, you'll recall, is
the reporter who puts together the Forbes Midas list of the top
100 investors (see most recent Midas List). Now the question is,
who takes over her role? Who will draw the ire of the VCs who are
left of the list, those who complained so vociferously each year
to Brown.
Separately, Bob Lisbonne, a partner at Matrix, who was a key product
manager during Netscape's early days, is leaving the firm. Too
bad to see one of the more geek-friendly VCs leaving the field.
He's known to still code occasionally. Among Lisbonne's board positions
are Blue Lane Technologies, Consera Software (acquired by Hewlett-Packard),
Euclid Media, LucidEra, PostPath, Renkoo, TeaLeaf Technology and
Xign. In a statement, he said: I intend to explore some new ideas,
have fun writing software, and ultimately pursue one or more entrepreneurial
endeavors. I'll continue to work out of my office at Matrix, so
all my contact info remains the same.
Christopher "Woody" Marshall, has left Trident Capital to joined
Technology Crossover Ventures as a general partner in Palo Alto,
Calif. Among the investments he managed at Trident were AccountNow,
Advanced Payment Solutions, Bytemobile Inc., Merchant e-Solutions,
MapQuest, SideStep and Xata. TCV is investing a huge $3 billion
fund, raised last year.
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