Nick Sturiale and Jeb Miller Join JAFCO Ventures as General Partners

Firm bolsters its team to build upon its proven business model for venture investment

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 4 JAFCO Ventures, a leading technology venture capital firm announced today that Nick Sturiale and Jeb Miller have joined the firm as General Partners.

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Mr. Sturiale is a seasoned and highly successful entrepreneur and venture investor with 21 years of venture capital and operating experience. He most recently was a Managing Director for The Carlyle Group, where he co-managed their Silicon Valley office. Prior to that he was a General Partner at Sevin Rosen Funds for nearly ten years as an active early-stage investor in open source, software-as-a-service (SaaS), consumer web-based services, IT infrastructure and security companies. Mr. Sturiale led Sevin Rosen’s early investments in XenSource (acquired by Citrix for $500 million) and remains a director of Splunk, Solidcore and YouSendit. Prior to Sevin Rosen, he spent 12 years as an entrepreneur at three venture-backed start-ups, including Timbre Technology, which he co-founded and successfully sold for $138 million to Tokyo Electron. Mr. Sturiale holds a B.S. degree from California State University, Chico and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mr. Miller is an extremely well regarded investor who brings to JAFCO 15 years of experience working with early-stage companies as a venture capitalist, operating executive and investment banker. He is a seasoned venture investor with deep domain experience in software, web-based services and IT infrastructure. Mr. Miller was as well most recently with The Carlyle Group and spent six years with early-stage venture capital firms ComVentures and Worldview Technology Partners. Prior to that he was an operating executive at Scient, a pioneering Internet consulting firm, and began his career as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley’s technology group in their New York, Boston and Menlo Park offices. Past investments that Mr. Miller was responsible for include Intruvert (acquired by McAfee), LogLogic, Pano Logic and Rhapsody Networks (acquired by Brocade). He also serves as a venture capital consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense’s DeVenCI program and holds a degree in economics from Harvard College where he graduated summa cum laude.

“Nick and Jeb have been our top two picks to join our team for quite some time,” said JAFCO General Partner, Joe Horowitz. “They are both highly experienced professionals, share our sense of values and are greatly respected by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists alike. With these additions to our firm we have now achieved our goal of building a complete team, and it comes at a time when we believe that discriminating investors will do well, especially if they bring more than just money to the table.”

“I have worked closely with Nick as a co-investor since the early days at XenSource and have known Joe for years,” said Kevin Compton, co-founder of Radar Partners and former Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. “This is a terrific team with a very compelling investment strategy.”

JAFCO Ventures has demonstrated quite a bit of momentum recently. With regard to exits, in Q4 of 2008 two of their portfolio companies were acquired for handsome prices. Microsoft purchased DATAllegro for $275 million and Postpath was acquired by Cisco for $215 million. “These outcomes in a tough economic environment are testament to the strength of our business model and our ability to execute against it,” said General Partner, Tom Mawhinney. And on the new investment side, the firm recently announced financings in high-profile companies such as Aster Data Systems, Meebo, Ocarina Networks, Palo Alto Networks, SocialVibe and Yodle.

A differentiated venture capital business model with a strong service orientation

As a highly focused, early expansion-stage investor, the JAFCO Ventures business model centers on a core team of very experienced venture capitalists, with great networks and a strong service orientation. The firm’s efforts are designed to complement the work of the quality, top-tier venture firms with whom they routinely co-invest. JAFCO differentiates itself from other venture firms with a Tokyo-based team of proven business development professionals that spend their efforts, full time, at opening the Japan market for portfolio companies, a market that is very large and lucrative for many technology companies. The firm also has venture partners with deep functional expertise who further help companies as they grow. At the end of the day, JAFCO’s value-added services can make a significant difference for a company at the time of sale or IPO. “When we sold Brion Technologies for a price in excess of $280 million, over 40% of our business that year came from Japan,” said Eric Chen, the company’s CEO at the time. “Without the expert skills and connections of JAFCO’s business development team, headed by Sunny Sugaya, we would likely not have made any inroads at all into this strategically important market.”

In addition, by managing relatively modest sized funds, JAFCO Ventures is able to limit its portfolio size and dedicated value-added services to a selective list of premier, venture-backed start-ups. In this way JAFCO is able to maximize the impact and frequency of distributions for their limited partners. As Jagdeep Singh, CEO of publicly traded Infinera put it, “the JAFCO team was very crisp and professional in their investment evaluation process and once they became shareholders they were extremely proactive in providing us with real help at the early stages of our growth.”

Building on a strong partnership culture to maximize performance

Due to his 30 years of experience in the venture business, General Partner Joe Horowitz has instilled at JAFCO Ventures a very strong partnership culture and team approach to investing reminiscent of the early days of venture capital. In some ways, it is back to the Venture Capital 1.0 model when tightly knit partnerships truly capitalized on the collective wisdom of the team in all aspects of the venture investing process. As Venture Partner Debby Meredith explains, “at JAFCO Ventures the idea of a team approach to investing is not just words, it is the heart of our culture and, to that end, Nick and Jeb are a wonderful fit for our firm.”

About JAFCO Ventures

Based in Palo Alto, JAFCO Ventures is a venture capital partnership that invests alongside top-tier venture capital firms in technology companies with true breakout potential. The firm’s focus is to invest in companies at an early expansion-stage. As such, JAFCO is designed to provide entrepreneurs with value-added services that include a core team of experienced venture capitalists, a Tokyo-based team of business development professionals to open the Japan market, and venture partners with “best of class” functional expertise. JAFCO Ventures first established its value-added business model for venture investing in 1992. Among the firm’s past investment successes are Avanex, Brocade, Ciena, Monterey Networks, nVidia, and Tivoli. The current JAFCO team has under management today $360 million, with recent successes that include Brion Technologies, DATAllegro, Infinera, and Postpath. For more information visit www.jafco.com.

Source: JAFCO Ventures