Private Equity
Gili Raanan, founder of such companies a nLayers Inc. and Sanctum Inc., has joined Sequoia Capital as a general partner, peHUB has learned. He will work out of the firm's Israel office, which lost partner Yuval Baharav last month. Sequoia recently raised $200 million for its fourth Israel-based fund. Raanan's relationship with Sequoia goes back at least a decade. The venture firm was an initial investor in Sanctum, an e-business security software company that raised $55 million before being acquired by VC-backed Watchfire (itself later bought by IBM). He then went on to found nLayers, which application discovery and mapping software. nLayers got scooped up by EMC in mid-2006, after which Raanan spent a few months as EMC's vice president of strategy.
1 min read · 18 March 2009
Chris Hughes has more professional accomplishments at 26 year-old than most of us will have in a lifetime. He co-founded Facebook with college roomates Mark Zuckerburg and Dustin Moskovitz, before leaving in 2007 to help the fledgling Obama campaign launch an online media strategy. The result was My.BarackObama.com, which many credit with getting the Illinois Senator elected. Now Hughes has a new fulltime gig: Entrepreneur-in-residence with venture capital firm General Catalyst Partners. “Chris has a unique connection to what it takes to build and start entrepreneurial companies, especially those driven by the energy of young people,” says Neil Sequeira, a partner with General Catalyst. “What we really want him to do is to be out there in the community helping young entrepreneurs and encouraging them with infrastructure and guidance.”
1 min read · 17 March 2009
Irving Weissman has joined the technical advisory group of OVP Venture Partners. He is a Stanford University professor who has formed three stem-cell companies: SyStemix Inc., StemCells Inc. and Cellerant Inc.
2 min read · 13 March 2009
Michael Beckwith has left Sequoia Capital, one year after coming aboard to launch a public equities program. No word yet on why he left, or where he may be going. As peHUB reported last April, Beckwith was charged to lead what many considered to be Sequoia's forray into hedge funds. Sources said that he was putting together a public equities team that would be tech-focused, but not tech-exclusive. Among his hires was Chris Lyle, who is still featured on the Sequoia Capital website. It was, and remains, unclear if Beckwith's group was related to an outsourced endowment manager program that Sequoia also launched at around the same time. That effort is called
1 min read · 12 March 2009
George Horner has joined Sofinnova Ventures as an executive-in-residence, according to VentureWire. He is the former CEO of Prestwick Pharmaceuticals, a Sofinnova-backed company sold last year to Biovail Corp. for $100 million in cash. www.sofinnova.com
1 min read · 12 March 2009
Bruce Downey has agreed to join NewSpring Capital as a partner. He previously was chairman and CEO of Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.
4 min read · 12 March 2009
Kendall Cooper has joined Mayfield Fund as chief financial officer. He previously served in the same role with Dominion Ventures.
2 min read · 12 March 2009
1 min read · 11 March 2009
Scott DePasquale has joined Braemar Energy Ventures as a principal and executive-in-residence. He will work out of the firm’s Boston office. He previously was a senior vice president with GE Energy Financial Services, where he led the group’s Boston-based VC activities.
2 min read · 10 March 2009
1 min read · 10 March 2009
