MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--U.S. Venture Partners (USVP), a leading early-stage venture capital firm, announced today the firm expanded its team by promoting Dr. Jacques Benkoski to Partner and adding two new EIRs, Mike Maciag and Craig Parker. The firm is also proud to announce that Benkoski received the 2013 International Fund Award for Innovative Venture Capitalist of the Year, United States.
USVP’s promotion of Jacques Benkoski to Partner recognizes his leadership in fostering USVP as an active investor in the Israeli market and in the IT markets in the U.S. Since 2005, Jacques has been involved with USVP investments in Chute, HelloFax, Plumgrid, Qnovo, Quixey, RiskIO, SupplyFrame, in addition to his active involvement with Israeli companies Trusteer, Zerto, and previously Dune Networks. He is currently Chairman of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Technion Society, and an active board member of the California Israel Chamber of Commerce.
Benkoski was recognized by the International Fund Awards as a thought leader as exemplified by his designing and implementing USVP’s unique and successful Israel investment strategy. The awards are given based on nominations, in-house research and industry knowledge. The International Fund Awards celebrate excellence within Private Equity, Venture Capital and Infrastructure.
An Executive-in-Residence for USVP, Mike Maciag served as the CEO of Electric Cloud for over seven years. Prior to joining Electric Cloud, Mike founded MS2 (acquired by Agile Software), an enterprise software company. Prior to MS2, Mike led Electronics for Imaging and NetFrame Systems, to successful public offerings.
Craig Parker joins USVP as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Craig was the SVP of Corporate Development and Strategy for Human Genome Sciences (acquired by Glaxo Smithkline). Previously, he was SVP of Corporate Development and Finance at Proteolix, a USVP portfolio company. He was formerly a managing director and head of biotechnology equity research at Lehman Brothers, and General Manager and SVP of the Specialty Therapeutics Franchise of Immunex (acquired by Amgen).
Coming off a record year in 2012 with over $500M in distributions, the firm continues its strong investment pace with a series of active investments during Q2 2013. Over the past two months, USVP made initial and follow-on investments in Exablox, Skytree, Clustrix, Zerto, eFFECTOR Therapeutics, Cleave Biosciences, PlaceIQ and Chute, continuing its momentum and strengthening its portfolio.
About U.S. Venture Partners
USVP is a leading venture capital partnership, helping entrepreneurs transform their ideas and efforts into world-changing companies. USVP focuses on early-stage ventures in information technology and health care, where innovation is unbridled and has led to the creation of economic wealth and millions of jobs over the past thirty-plus years of the firm's existence. Areas of particular interest to our investment professionals include data center and network technology, consumer and business services, digital media, communications, semiconductors, biopharmaceuticals and medical devices. The USVP team consists of former entrepreneurs, technologists, corporate executives, financial professionals and industry domain experts. Find more about USVP’s portfolio company news by following us on Twitter @USVP_ or liking us on Facebook.
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