News

Ignition Partner s Raises $150 Million Fund New, Oversubscribed Fund to Focus on Business Software, Cloud Computing; Greater Silicon Valley Focus

Ignition Partner
s http://www.ignitionpartners.com/
, an early

stage
venture

capital firm, announced it has
closed
its fifth fund. The $150 million vehicle will
target
early

stage invest
ments in enterprise

technology companies located
thr
oughout
the U.S., with a strong
emphasis on the West Coast.

Ignition a
lso
has added a new partner, Nick Sturiale, based in the San Francisco Bay Area
and opened a new office in Palo Alto, Calif.
The moves are part of a transition toward
creating
a
more

focused partnership with a
larger Silicon Valley p
resence

and one with
de
ep operational experience in the enterprise.
The new dual

geography presence will
give the firm access to innovative ideas, and talent, in both markets.

The
core
team behind Ignition Venture Partners V includes partners John Connors, Frank
Artale and Stur
iale
, who previously worked at JAFCO Ventures, Sevin Rosen Funds and
the Carlyle Group
. Connors, a former top Microsoft executive who served as its chief
financial officer, joined Ignition in 2005. Artale, a longtime software

industry executive
who has hel
d top positions at
companies including Citrix, XenS
ource and Microsoft,
joined the firm in 2011.

Artale and Sturial
e are also former entrepreneurs
:
Artale co

founded
Consera Software,
which was acquired by Hewlett

Packard in 2004,
and was an early employee at
XenSource.
Sturiale’s company, Timbre Technologies, was p
urchased by Tokyo Electron
in 2001
.

Investors in Ignition’s
new
fund, which was oversubscribed and raised by the current
team in less than three months, include returning
and new university endowments,
pension funds and investment firms.

"With
approximately
$450
mi
llion in distributions in the last 12 months
, our firm has
strong momentum going forward,
and we are honored to receive such strong support
and validation
from
our
limited partners," said C
onno
rs
.

"
We
are extremely upbeat
about the current market and view
the recent string
of successful,
ent
erpr
ise

software
IPOs
as
the start of
a decade

long run of innovation
that will usher in major productivity
enhancements, a
nd new ways of doing business, for companies worldwide."

Recent
Ignition exits
include the initial
public offering of Splunk, a
"
big

data
"
company
that
went public in
April
and stands as
one of the most successful new technology
stock
offerings of the last
several years
, and the acqu
isitions of portfolio companies
StorSimple, Azaleos and Z
enprise. Previous Ignition successes include virtualization
company XenSource (acquired by
Citrix
)
and cloud

development firm
Heroku
(acquired
by Salesforce.com).

Other, c
urrent Ignition investm
ents include Cloudera, DocuSign
, Parse, Hipmunk,
Opscode and Bromium.
The new fund
will inv
est more narrowly
in areas such as
"consumerized" enterprise software, c
loud technologies and big data,
building on
Ignition’s technology "pla
tform" expertise.

"
We applaud
Ignition’s refined, more

focused approach to early

stage investing and
believe the enterprise

IT lands
cape
is
poised to create
important new companies
and
substantial new
wealth," said Tom Gladden, a partner at Adams Street
Partners, which
has invested in the new fund.

Other team
members in Ignition V include Administrative Partner Robert Headley;
Venture P
artner Cameron Myhrvold;
Chief Financial Officer Jack Ferry; and P
rincipal
Kristina Kerr Bergman. Partners from prior Ign
ition funds will continue to serve in their
current roles to maximize returns from existing portfolio companies.

About Ignition

Ignition Partners
helps entrepreneurs build innovative, category

defining businesses of
lasting value. The firm
, with offices i
n Bellevue, Wash. and Palo Alto, Calif.,
specializes in
early

sta
ge investments in
"consumerized"
enterprise IT, cloud
computing and big data.

CONTACT:

Rebecca Buckman

The Buckman Group / For Ignition

650

703

0364

[email protected]

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