Shasta Ventures, a venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA, added three professionals to its team.
These new additions, which aim to bolster the firm’s expanding focus on early-stage enterprise software companies, include:
– Balaji Yelamanchili, who joins as a venture partner to help expand the efforts of the enterprise team. Most recently, he was the executive vice president and general manager of Symantec’s Enterprise Security Business Unit. Before Symantec, Yelamanchili was senior vice president at Oracle where he was responsible for its business analytics and performance management strategy as well as product management, product development, and product go-to-market functions. He also held executive positions at EMC Corporation, Documentum Inc., and Electronic Data Systems, among other tech companies.
– Izak Mutlu, who joins as an executive-in-residence after three decades in information security. Mutlu served as vice president of Information Security and Product Security at Salesforce, where he oversaw IT security, compliance, architecture, design, implementation, and operations. While at Salesforce, he created the Customer Security Advisory Council, regularly meeting with hundreds of customers to share security compliance roadmaps and hear customers’ concerns. Mutlu also co-created the nonprofit Bay Area CSO Council and has been its president for more than a dozen years. Before joining Salesforce, Mutlu also served as the CISO of multiple Bay Area technology companies, including Silicon Graphics and Solectron.
– Drew Harman, who brings to Shasta more than 25 years of enterprise software experience in executive roles in strategy, product, and marketing. In his new position as a board partner, Harman will work with CEOs of several Shasta portfolio companies as a strategic advisor and board member. He currently serves on the boards of Aria, NewsCred, Totango and Splice Machine. Harman has advised and invested in many early-stage enterprise software startups, including Guidewire Software (NYSE: GWRE) and Model N (NYSE: MODN), among others. Earlier in his career, he was with Ariba as vice president of Product Management and later served as vice president of Corporate Strategy.
Founded in 2004 and led by Managing Director and Partner Jason Pressman and Partner Nitin Chopra, among others, Shasta currently has more than $1 billion under management investing in enterprise and consumer companies with a deep focus on emerging platforms.
Current enterprise software investments include Anaplan, Canva, Highspot, LeanData, Leanplum, LiveIntent, Lucidworks, Spiceworks, Scalyr and Sendbird.
Earlier investments include Apptio (APTI: NASDAQ), Glint (just acquired by LinkedIn), and Zuora (ZUO: NYSE).
Shasta’s security portfolio features Airspace Systems, Mocana, Stealth Security and Valimail, among others.
FinSMEs
11/10/2018