Ignition Partners Names Three New Partners at Investment Group
Bellevue, WA - November 19, 2007 - Ignition Partners, a premier private investment group with offices in the Northwest and Shanghai, China, today announced the promotion of three outstanding individuals to Partner in conjunction with the closing of its recent funds. Richard Fade, Michelle Goldberg, and Adrian Smith will all serve as investing Partners in Ignition Ventures IV, LP.Adrian Smith has been with Ignition Partners for the last eight years as a Principal, focused largely on investments in the wireless industry. Prior to joining Ignition, Adrian served in various roles at British Telecom Labs, McCaw Cellular and NextLink Communications where he continued to expand his wireless expertise. While at McCaw, Adrian was instrumental in the development of TDMA standard, one of the early national standards for cellular providers. Adrian currently serves on the Boards of Ignition Portfolio companies Twisted Pair Solutions, SinglePoint, Melodeo and Sotto Wireless.
Michelle Goldberg has also been with Ignition Partners for the last eight years as a Principal, focused largely on investments in the internet and consumer software arena. Michelle has extensive background in investment banking and consulting, having served as an investment banker at Olympic Capital Partners, and as management consultant with AT Kearney. Michelle currently serves on the Boards of Ignition portfolio companies Entellium, Mpire, Visible Technologies, and SEOmoz.
Richard Fade has been with Ignition for the last four years as a Venture Partner and his primary focus has been on investments in the software infrastructure segment. Prior to joining Ignition, Richard worked at Microsoft for 16 years whre he held roles leading Microsoft's OEM division, Desktop Applications division and Microsoft Asia. Richard currently serves on the Boards of Talyst, GotVoice, Centeris, and Azaleos.
"One of the main reasons we wanted to work with Ignition as an investment partner is because of the world-class expertise of every member of the Ignition team," said Rich Begert, President and CEO of SinglePoint. "We're very fortunate to have Ignition as an investor in our company because of their incredible domain expertise, their hands-on, value-added approach, and the strategic counsel that they offer to us as a portfolio company."
On October 1, 2007, Ignition announced its fourth early stage fund, Ignition Venture Partners IV, which closed at $400 million and the formation of its new Ignition Growth Capital fund which closed at $275 million. Ignition currently has approximately $1.8 billion under management.
About Ignition Partners
Ignition Partners, (www.ignitionpartners.com) is a premier private investment group with offices in Bellevue, Washington and Shanghai, China. Ignition Partners' affiliated family of funds includes Ignition Ventures and Ignition Growth Capital in the U.S. and Qiming Ventures in China. The investment group's three categories of funds - early stage venture, growth capital and China ventures -brings together an unparalleled combination of domain focus, functional expertise and global operational experience with partners from leadership positions at Microsoft, McCaw Cellular Communications, AT&T Wireless, Cisco, Starbucks and other industry leaders.
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