LiveOak Venture Partners Announces Key Hire

Austin-based early-stage Venture Capital fund adds Creighton Hicks as Principal

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LiveOak Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Austin, Texas, today announced a new key hire with the addition of Creighton Hicks as Principal. He will be responsible for sourcing new deals and driving new investments, in addition to supporting LiveOak’s growing portfolio.

Creighton joins LiveOak Venture Partners with over a decade of experience investing or operating in early-stage technology companies. Previously, Creighton was a partner with Dell Technologies Capital (DTC) in Silicon Valley where he led investments in early-stage enterprise technology companies, including CloudKnox, Datometry and FullStory. He joined DTC from Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers (KPCB) where he was actively involved in several of the firm’s early-stage investments, including CoreOS (acquired by RedHat), Relayr (acquired by HSB). Earlier in his career, Creighton led a product marketing team for VMware’s flagship virtualization offerings. Creighton started his career in Austin at IBM’s Tivoli Software division as a product manager, technical sales specialist and developer. He has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

As a UT Longhorn, Creighton’s relocation from Silicon Valley to Austin will be a coming home of sorts. “At the core of every great startup is a great team,” says Hicks. “Austin’s and more broadly Texas’ status as one of the most attractive and fastest-growing tech markets is driving an influx of talent and founders. The high caliber of entrepreneurs that have chosen to partner with LiveOak is impressive and speaks to LiveOak’s reputation as the area’s leading early-stage investor. I am excited to join the partnership and back founders building category-leading technology companies that call Texas home.”

Despite the current economic climate, LiveOak Venture Partners continues to see terrific investment opportunities in the state of Texas and has been steadily growing its investment team over the last 2 years.

According to LiveOak Founding Partner, Krishna Srinivasan, “The hire of Creighton as Principal culminates a yearlong extensive search for a key investment professional to join our team. With the close of our second fund last year, we knew that we would need another experienced investor to support the abundant activity in the Texas market. Creighton stood out amidst a field of candidates, both by being a fit with the firm’s culture and by having an outstanding investment track record.”

Creighton has Texas roots, which is particularly important given the firm’s geographic focus on Texas investments exclusively. That, coupled with the strategic relationships he has cultivated in the Bay Area, appealed to LiveOak’s Founding Partners.

“We are thrilled to have Creighton join our team. He brings incredible depth in enterprise software and infrastructure software in particular, which are areas of strong startup activity in this market,” added LiveOak Founding Partner, Venu Shamapant.

About LiveOak Venture Partners

LiveOak Venture Partners is a venture capital fund based in Austin, Texas. With 20 years of successful venture investing in Texas, the founders of LiveOak have helped create nearly $2 billion of enterprise value. While almost all of LiveOak's investments begin at the Seed and Series A stages, LiveOak is a full life cycle investor focused on helping create category leading technology and technology-enabled service companies headquartered in Texas. LiveOak Venture Partners has been the lead investor in over 30 exciting high-growth Texas-based companies in the last seven years including ones such as CS Disco, Digital Pharmacist, OJO Labs, Opcity and TrustRadius.