Claremont Creek Ventures Appoints Harsh Patel as Director

OAKLAND, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 15, 2014) - Claremont Creek Ventures (CCV), a seed and early stage venture fund, today announced the addition of Harsh Patel as Director to its investment team. Patel has extensive expertise as an entrepreneur, investor and engineer and a diverse background that includes pioneering work in data analytics.

"Harsh brings impressive & highly relevant experience to our partnership. At CCV we invest in digital solutions with the potential to transform essential, broad-impact industries such as healthcare and energy. We partner with young technology companies creating high-growth, high-margin, and capital efficient businesses in these sectors," said CCV Director Paul Straub. "We have known Harsh for years and it is remarkable how closely his accomplishments reflect the intersection of technology themes and markets that we also find most promising for innovation. He is extremely talented and his background meshes perfectly with our formula for successful early-stage investing," added Straub.

Harsh has built a successful investing track record as a General Partner at RRE Ventures and In-Q-Tel (the venture capital arm of the U.S. Intelligence Community), leading a number of early stage investments including Palantir Technologies, Tendril and Flipswap (now ERecyclingCorps). He has also been an active angel investor and mentor to a number of seed stage companies including Badgeville and SnappyTV. As an operator, Harsh was most recently President of Bina Technologies, a pioneer in big data analytics for genomics. Earlier, Harsh was a Co-Founder of Orbit Commerce (acquired by Digital River, NASD:DRIV) where he designed one of the first SaaS platforms for small business e-commerce. Harsh began his career in enterprise technology R&D for Accenture, building solutions for AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson and American Express.

"Harsh has experience as a founder, operator and venture investor, giving him the judgment and hands-on approach ideal for our lifecycle investment strategy of engaging with entrepreneurs very early in a company's development," said CCV Co-Founder and Managing Director, Nat Goldhaber. "Our portfolio continued to exhibit great momentum in 2013. We had a $350M exit in EcoATM, invested in 13 companies, and a substantial number of our portfolio companies closed strong new financings to fuel future growth. We are excited to have Harsh join us as a partner to help guide CCV and our portfolio companies to even greater success."

"I see tremendous market opportunity for CCV," said Patel. "This firm has a unique understanding of essential industries such as energy and healthcare and how pervasive digital trends are impacting these sectors. CCV invests in companies that bring the power of mobility, big data analytics and user-centric design to large industry sectors that were historically slower to adopt IT-driven change. That thesis has significant upside for investors and is already proven by CCV's successful partnerships with companies such as Clean Power Finance, AssureX, Project Frog, and Natera."

Harsh also believes in promoting entrepreneurship through education and access. He is a founding board member of Anjna Patient Education and the University of Illinois Silicon Valley Roundtable, and a mentor to minority entrepreneurs through the NewME Accelerator. Harsh holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.S. in Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

About Claremont Creek Ventures
Claremont Creek Ventures (CCV) is a seed and early stage venture firm. CCV invests in companies that serve essential, broad-impact industries with innovative digital solutions that increase efficiency or create entirely new high-growth, high-margin businesses. As part of CCV's investment strategy, the firm practices "life cycle venturing": establishing in-depth, active relationships with entrepreneurs alongside or even ahead of early-stage funding events. Claremont Creek Ventures has invested in over 40 companies including Clean Power Finance, EcoATM, and Natera and manages more than $300 million across two funds. Visit www.claremontcreek.com.

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