LiveOak Announces Partner Promotions After the Successful Close of $210M Fund III

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--LiveOak Venture Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Austin, Texas, is pleased to announce the promotion of Creighton Hicks and Mike Marcantonio to Partner. The promotions coincide with the launch of the firm’s third fund, a $210M fund focused on early-stage companies in Texas. The pair join Founding Partners Venu Shamapant and Krishna Srinivasan who launched LiveOak nearly a decade ago.

“We are delighted with Mike and Creighton’s promotions as the new partners at LiveOak. Both of them have demonstrated strong leadership on deals and firm development. They both have also demonstrated that they can be terrific, trusted partners to exceptional entrepreneurs in the state of Texas throughout the company building lifecycle,” said Krishna Srinivasan, Founding Partner.

Newly Appointed Partner Brings Early-Stage Silicon Valley Investment Experience Home to Texas

Creighton joined LiveOak in 2020 from Dell Technologies Capital (DTC) where he led investments in numerous early-stage software companies, including CloudKnox (acquired by Microsoft) 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), Qumulo and Nav. 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 and developer after graduating with a computer science degree from the University of Texas, Austin.

Creighton is passionate, in particular, about partnering with technical founders and helping them navigate the journey to product-market-fit. As both an Austin native and a recent transplant from the Bay Area, Creighton is excited to help others that are new to Texas plug into the entrepreneurial scene. A few of the investments he has led at LiveOak include Passage, passwordless user authentication for developers, and Intrigue (acquired by FireEye), an attack surface management platform.

Newly Appointed Partner Brings Multi-Stage Investing Experience Across Industries

Prior to joining LiveOak in 2018, Mike spent six years with early-stage venture firm Blue Heron Capital in Virginia. There, he focused on healthcare IT and enterprise software investments, including Avizia (acquired by AmWell), PresenceLearning (acquired by Spectrum Equity and TPG), and Verisma. Earlier in his career Mike was with American Capital, a middle-market private equity firm, where he focused on pre-investment due diligence. He also spent time with the Healthcare group at Harris Williams, a sell-side M&A advisory firm. Mike started his career with PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Mike has experience investing across multiple industries, including digital healthcare, eCommerce, fintech, and supply chain & logistics. He enjoys supporting early-stage founders as they scale up their business. At LiveOak he has led the firm’s investments in companies such as Take Command Health, FloorFound, and Mercado.

“The promotions add critical leadership to the LiveOak team. It has positioned the firm to continue to scale through the next phase of growth and success in the years to come, especially with the successful close of the recent Fund,” said Venu Shamapant, Founding Partner.

About LiveOak Venture Partners

LiveOak Venture Partners is a venture capital fund based in Austin, Texas. 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 40 exciting high-growth Texas-based companies in the last eight years including CS Disco, Homeward, Eventus, Digital Pharmacist, OJO Labs, Opcity, and TrustRadius.