Menlo Ventures Hires Matt Murphy as a Managing Director

MENLO PARK, CA--(Marketwired - Jun 11, 2015) - Menlo Ventures announced today that Matt Murphy is joining the firm as a managing director. Murphy was an accomplished investor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) for more than a decade. At Menlo, Murphy will focus on enterprise infrastructure and mobile-first application investments in consumer and enterprise.

Murphy says Menlo's strategy and current fund size of $400M appealed to him, along with their focus on early to mid-stage investments. He was also attracted to Menlo's reputation, culture, and core leadership team.

"Menlo invests in the ideal combination of enterprise companies like 3PAR and PernixData and mobile technologies like Uber and MachineZone," Murphy said. "I've known Mark Siegel and Venky Ganesan for more than 10 years, and am extremely excited to work with a long-term team of partners who have created a culture of collaboration, integrity, humility, and the desire to make a difference," he said.

Menlo managing director Mark Siegel said Murphy's experience launching KPCB's iFund, along with numerous consumer and enterprise investments such as Simplivity, AppDynamics, InsideSales.com, and Shazam, will support Menlo's continued success.

"Matt will help us enhance an already strong reputation as a top-tier venture firm by making the best investments possible at a time when venture capital has once again become very competitive," said Siegel, a 19-year Menlo veteran. "Matt has incredible breadth of knowledge and wisdom to share with our entrepreneurs."

Entrepreneurs who have worked with Matt agree. Doron Kempel, CEO of Simplivity, said, "Matt invested in in our company just as we were hitting an inflection point. His understanding of the market and conviction about the company made a huge difference in choosing to work with him. Since then his responsiveness and interest in helping in any way possible has been awesome."

"As one of the original iFund companies, I've had the pleasure of working with Matt since the launch of the iPhone," said Andrew Fisher, Chairman of Shazam. "His early belief in mobile centric companies and related strategic insights have made him a terrific partner to Shazam at every stage. Menlo Ventures is an excellent choice for Matt and I am also thrilled that he's staying on our board."

Jim Goetz, venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital, said, "I've known Matt and the Menlo crew for a long time so it's great to see them teaming up. Matt's a terrific investor and we look forward to working with him again."

Ted Schlein, general partner at KPCB said, "In his 15 years as a partner at KPCB, Matt has exemplified true partnership in every sense of the word. We're excited for Matt as he pursues the next phase of his career and look forward to partnering with him at Menlo Ventures."

MURPHY INVESTMENT BACKGROUND
At KPCB, Murphy was either a director or worked closely with the management teams of AppDynamics, Drawbridge, Egnyte, Insidesales.com, InstartLogic, PernixData, Puppet Labs, SessionM, Shazam and Simplivity. Previously, he was a board observer at Google from the initial venture investment to its IPO and in 2008 launched the $200M iFund, a collaborative initiative with Apple to build the defining applications on the IOS platform.

Murphy also led KPCB's investments in AutoNavi and Aerohive Networks, both public companies and served as a director at Shopkick, Pelago, Ocarina Networks, Dash Navigation and Peakstream. All of these companies were ultimately acquired.

Murphy will join Menlo's six other managing directors. They are:

• Mark Siegel, who focuses on investments in datacenter infrastructure, IT security, SaaS applications and mobile applications.
  
  
• Venky Ganesan, who focuses on investments in cybersecurity and marketplaces.
  
  
• Pravin Vazirani, who focuses on investments in the cloud, SaaS and E-commerce.
  
  
• Shawn Carolan, who focuses on investments in consumer technology, with particular interest in major technological shifts that improve users' daily lives.
  
  
• Doug Carlisle, who focuses on investments in the information technology sector.
  
  
• John Jarve, who focuses on investments in the storage, Internet and financial technology sectors.
  
  

MENLO TRACK RECORD: 70 IPOS IN 39 YEARS
Since its founding 39 years ago, Menlo has helped take more than 70 companies public and orchestrated 100+ mergers and acquisitions. Menlo's recent success includes seven liquidity events in the past eighteen months. These include Dropcam (acquired by Nest for $555 million), Check (acquired by Intuit for $360 million, Edgecast (acquired by Verizon for $395 million), Flurry (acquired by Yahoo!), Cellfire (acquired by Catalina Marketing), Voltage Security (acquired by HP), and eXelate (acquired by Nielsen). Other Menlo XI investments such as Uber, Stance, Roku, Betterment, Warby Parker and Tintri have raised rounds at substantial valuations in the last year.

Menlo's history of successful investing includes more than 400 companies funded, with an aggregate market value of more than $200 billion. In the last five years alone, Menlo's 38 exits had a combined market value of $11 billion. Menlo's total capital under management since inception is $4.4 billion.

For Menlo XII, enterprise focus areas include cyber security, cloud infrastructure, big data, and Software-as-a-Service. Consumer investment focus areas are marketplaces, vertical e-commerce, subscription services, and mobile applications. Menlo will also allocate $15 million from the new fund for the Menlo Talent Fund, dedicated solely to promising seed-stage ideas.

About Menlo Ventures
Menlo Ventures provides capital for multi-stage consumer and enterprise technology companies. Since 1976, the firm's market-driven analysis has led to the identification of and successful exits in innovative technology markets. Notable areas of investment have included Mobile/Mobile Marketplaces (Siri, Uber, Machine Zone, Roku, Rover.com, Getaround, Munchery), Social & Ecommerce (Tumblr, Lumosity, Poshmark), Cloud (Carbonite, EdgeCast, Dropcam, Vidyo), Storage & Big Data (3Par, Coraid, Tintri, Avere Systems), Digital Advertising (Flurry, YuMe, DataXu, Dstillery, eXelate) and Security (Cavium, IronPort, nCircle, BitSight, vArmour). Menlo's guiding philosophy is to work side-by-side with entrepreneurs and founders as allies, serving actively on boards as company builders with decades of industry expertise, and opening access to a broad network of advisors, partners and technical talent. Menlo Ventures has $4.4 Billion under management and is currently investing Menlo Ventures XII, a $400M fund with $15M allocated to the Menlo Talent Fund for fast seed funding. For more information, visit www.menlovc.com.