AUSTIN and SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 6,
2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sapphire Ventures, LLC ("Sapphire" or
the "Firm"), a leading venture capital firm that partners with
visionary teams and venture funds to build companies of
consequence, today announced the promotions of Annalise Dragic, Nate
Leung, Shruti Tournatory, Elizabeth
Patterson and Casber Wang to Partner across its Sapphire
Ventures, Partners and Portfolio Growth groups. Additionally, the
following team members also received promotions: Robert Severo, Shinta
Yulia, Jason Morris,
Jenny Bavinger, Annie Warner, Jane
Lee, and Lacy Balsama.
Sapphire recognizes and congratulates these exceptional team
members on their accomplishments.
"2021 has been a banner year filled with major milestones for
Sapphire that have elevated the firm's scale and reach in
unprecedented ways," said Nino
Marakovic, CEO, Partner and co-Founder of Sapphire. "Today
marks a significant milestone as the entire firm welcomes five
dedicated investors and growth operators into the partnership. I am
confident that their talent, passion and expertise will help drive
Sapphire toward even greater success in the coming years."
Sapphire Ventures U.S.-Based Team Promotions
Casber
Wang: Casber joined Sapphire Ventures in 2018 as an Associate.
In four years, he has climbed the ranks to Partner on the Sapphire
Ventures team. On the team, he primarily focuses on security,
enterprise infrastructure, data & analytics and blockchain
infrastructure. He is a board observer at JumpCloud, Verbit,
Uptycs, Tetrate and Zesty. Prior to Okta's acquisition, he was also
a board observer at Auth0. In addition, he works closely with the
team at CircleCI, Cypress, Dremio, Privacera, Side, StackHawk and
Thoughtspot. Furthermore, he actively worked on investments in
Exabeam, Moveworks, Pendo, Outreach, OwnBackup and Zesty. In 2020,
Business Insider recognized Casber as an Enterprise VC Rising Star
Investor.
Jane Lee: Jane, who is
being promoted from Senior Associate to VP, joined Sapphire in
2018 to focus on investments in the SaaS, B2B fintech, ecommerce
enablement, design, collaboration, and digital health spaces. She
is involved with Sapphire's investments in AvidXchange, BetterUp,
Brightfield, Cazoo, Gorgias, Mercury, Podium, SWORD Health, and
Unmind.
Sapphire Ventures Europe Team Promotion
"Over the
coming year, Sapphire has committed to significantly expanding its
European investment activities, further scaling our global
footprint," said Andreas Weiskam, Co-Founder and Partner of
Sapphire Ventures. "We are pleased to promote and recognize
Annalise as our newest partner on the European investment
team."
Annalise
Dragic: Annalise joined Sapphire Ventures in early
2020. In 2021, she was promoted to Principal, and this year, has
been promoted to Partner on the Sapphire Ventures European
investment team. Annalise focuses on B2B software and fintech
investments across Europe and
Israel and is passionate about
promoting ESG initiatives and supporting female founders. She is
involved in Sapphire's investments in Adverity, Contentful,
Currencycloud, GitGuardian, Matillion, Unmind and Yapily, and
worked on the firm's investment in Cazoo and Wandera (acquired
by Jamf). She also takes an active leadership role mentoring
associates in the London office as
the firm continues to build out their European presence.
Sapphire Partners Team Promotion
Nate Leung: Nate joined Sapphire in 2019. In
just a few years, he has been promoted to Partner on the Sapphire
Partners team. In his role, he supports the team's investments in
early-stage venture capital funds and is passionate about
partnering with established and emerging venture fund managers and
supporting aspiring GPs. In 2021, Nate took a leadership role in
Sapphire Partners' #OpenLP initiative to demystify the LP
perspective in the venture ecosystem and spearheaded the launch of
the #OpenLP podcast series. He also supports Sapphire Partners'
direct co-investing program to deepen Sapphire's partnerships with
GPs.
"We are fortunate to have the opportunity to partner with
exceptional venture fund managers, and Nate has been an
instrumental and strategic partner to our portfolio," said
Beezer Clarkson, Partner and Head of
Sapphire Partners.
Portfolio Growth Team Promotions
The promotions
underscore Sapphire's commitment to current and future portfolio
companies and founders as the team focuses on driving value and
maximum impact when helping portfolio companies along their
journeys.
Today, Sapphire is thrilled to celebrate the achievements of two
Portfolio Growth leaders at Sapphire — Shruti Tournatory and
Elizabeth Patterson — and announce
their promotions. As Portfolio Growth partners, they are deeply
committed to helping founders and CEOs on their road to building
companies of consequence.
- Shruti Tournatory: Shruti joined Sapphire in 2014. She
has since been leading Sapphire's business development and
go-to-market team globally with a focus on revenue acceleration for
Sapphire's portfolio companies. Shruti is responsible leading for
the firm's CxO network, developing the annual CIO Innovation Index
industry benchmark and has also established Sapphire's initial
Centers of Excellence (CoEs) delivering operator communities,
playbooks, and scaling resources for the portfolio on topics such
as Engineering, Go-to-Market and International Expansion.
- Elizabeth Patterson:
Elizabeth joined Sapphire in 2018. Since then, she has been leading
Sapphire's Talent team who work closely with CEOs and executives to
help them to build, develop and retain world class teams and boards
of directors. She works closely with Sapphire's portfolio companies
to understand their strategic talent needs and matches them with
resources from within Sapphire's network to help companies grow and
optimize business outcomes. Elizabeth also partners with Sapphire
portfolio companies to diversify their boards of directors and is
honored to be an Advisor to Black Women on Boards.
- Jenny Bavinger: Jenny
joined Sapphire in 2020 as Director of Marketing and is now being
promoted to Senior Director of Marketing. A storyteller at heart,
she has nearly 15 years of B2B tech communications and marketing
experience, which she leverages to drive full-stack marketing and
PR for the firm's Sapphire Ventures and Portfolio Growth teams. She
is also active in supporting Sapphire's portfolio companies on
marketing and communications strategy.
- Annie Warner: Annie
joined Sapphire as Manager of Business Development in 2020 and is
now being promoted to Director of Business Development. She
collaborates in managing Sapphire's network of Global 2000 CXOs.
This network is the foundation for Sapphire's CIO Innovation Index,
an ongoing study of CIO engagement with venture-backed startups, as
well as Sapphire's annual Vision Summit for enterprise CxOs and
startup CEOs.
Operations Team Promotions
- Robert Severo: Robert
joined Sapphire in 2018 and is now being promoted to VP of Risk
& Analytics, in addition to his current role as Chief
Compliance Officer. Robert helps lead Sapphire's compliance and
risk management efforts firmwide.
- Shinta Yulia: Shinta
joined Sapphire in 2020 as Controller and is now being promoted to
Senior Controller (Global). Shinta is responsible for all
accounting and financial reporting aspects at Sapphire.
- Jason Morris: Jason
joined Sapphire in 2020 as Director, Analytics and Investor
Relations and is now transitioning to a new dedicated IR role in
Office of the CEO. Jason helps to support Sapphire Ventures'
investor relations and portfolio analytics efforts.
- Lacy Balsama: Lacy joined
Sapphire in 2018 as an Executive Assistant. With this recent
promotion, she has transitioned to a new HR Generalist role. Lacy
will continue to handle all on-boarding and off-boarding for the
firm, as well as recruiting for all support staff.
For more information about the Sapphire team, visit:
https://sapphireventures.com/team/
About Sapphire
Sapphire is a leading global technology-focused venture capital
firm with more than $8.8 billion in
AUM and team members across Austin, London, New
York, Palo Alto and
San Francisco. For more than two
decades, Sapphire has partnered with visionary management teams and
venture funds to help scale companies of consequence. Since its
founding, Sapphire has invested in more than 170 companies globally
(b) resulting in more than 30 IPOs and 45 acquisitions.
(c) The firm's investment strategies — Sapphire
Ventures, Sapphire Partners and Sapphire Sport — are focused on
scaling companies and venture funds, elevating them to become
category leaders. Sapphire's Portfolio Growth team of experienced
operators delivers a strategic blend of value-add services, tools
and resources designed to support portfolio company leaders as they
scale. To learn more about Sapphire,
visit: https://sapphireventures.com.
(a) "AUM" — Assets Under Management (AUM) represents
Sapphire's Regulatory Assets Under Management as of 12/31/2020 per ADV filed March 2021 as well as new commitments made to
Sapphire Funds during calendar year 2021.
(b) Figures represent all Sapphire direct growth investments
made since the firm's inception in 2011 to November 2021.
(c) Figures represent all Sapphire direct growth investments
that have had an IPO or public listing from the firm's inception in
2011 to November 2021. The specific companies identified may not be
representative of all of Sapphire's investments and no assumption
should be made that the investments identified were or will be
profitable. A complete alphabetical list of Sapphire's investments
made by its direct growth investing funds is
available here.
Disclaimer - Nothing presented within this article is
intended to constitute investment advice, and under no
circumstances should any information provided herein be used or
considered as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy
an interest in any investment fund managed by Sapphire Ventures,
LLC ("Sapphire"). Sapphire does not provide investment advice and
is not registered in the United
Kingdom. Information provided reflects Sapphires' views as
of a time, whereby such views are subject to change at any point
and Sapphire shall not be obligated to provide notice of any
change. Nothing contained in this article may be relied upon as a
guarantee or assurance as to the future success of any particular
company. Companies mentioned in this article are a representative
sample of portfolio companies in which Sapphire has invested in
which the author believes such companies fit the objective criteria
stated in commentary, which do not reflect all investments made by
Sapphire. A complete alphabetical list of Sapphires' investments
made by its direct growth and sports investing strategies is
available here. Various statements made by third party guests about
Sapphire relate to the nature and type of management services
provided by Sapphire and do not constitute testimonials to
Sapphires' investment advisory services and no inference to the
contrary should be made. Sapphire does not solicit or make its
services available to the public and none of the funds are
currently open to new investors. While the Sapphire has used
reasonable efforts to obtain information from reliable sources, we
make no representations or warranties as to the accuracy,
reliability, or completeness of third-party information presented
herein, which is subject to change. Past performance is not
indicative of future results.
Media Contact:
Michael Stolyar
sapphire@luminapr.com
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SOURCE Sapphire Ventures