Author name: startup_admin

Headquarters: Austin, Texas Description: LiveOak Venture Partners is an Austin-based, early-stage venture capital firm that partners with visionary entrepreneurs who use disruptive technologies and business models to challenge the status quo. While many of their investments begin at the seed stage, LiveOak is a full life-cycle investor focused on technology and technology-driven service companies primary based in Texas and the Southwest. For over a decade, the Founders of LiveOak have helped entrepreneurs create industry-leading companies. “LiveOak partners with visionary entrepreneurs who use disruptive technologies and business models to challenge the status quo.” Recent Investments: Ranzure Networks $13M / Series A (Lead) CS Disco $18.58M / Series C Data.world $14M / Series A NSS Labs $16M / Series C Website:  liveoakvp.com Venu Shamapant is a co-founder of LiveOak Venture Partners and has been investing in early stage Texas based companies and entrepreneurs since 1999.  Prior to founding LiveOak, Venu was a General Partner at Austin Ventures where he invested in companies producing more than $1.5B in enterprise values to date. He was an early investor in and sat on the Board of Directors of LifeSize Communications (acquired by Logitech), Spatial Wireless (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent), Navini Networks (acquired by Cisco Systems), Mavenir Systems (NYSE:MVNR) and Sipera Systems (acquired by Avaya Communications). Prior to joining Austin Ventures, he was with McKinsey & Co. serving clients in the enterprise systems and software markets. He started his professional career as a software developer and engineering lead at Mentor Graphics.  

Headquarters: Cincinnati, Ohio Description: River Cities invests in world-class management teams − backing progressive, proven leaders of healthcare and information technology companies. A consistent, cohesive team has honed its strategy over four prior funds with compelling performance. River Cities seeks to be a business partner first and a capital provider second, investing significant human capital to leverage its domain expertise and a network of thought leaders assembled over the last 20 years. “Building bridges between today’s opportunities and tomorrow’s success.” Recent Investments: Building Engines, Inc. $26M / Private Equity NICO $15M / Venture Canvas $4M / Venture Netsertive, Inc $24M / Series C (Lead) Website: www.rccf.com Patrick Dunnigan joined River Cities in 2014 to focus on technology and healthcare investment opportunities. Prior to joining RCCF, Patrick worked at a venture-backed cloud services company and was a senior associate with Florida-based Ballast Point Ventures, where he worked on healthcare and tech-enabled business services growth-stage investments. Previously, Patrick was a senior investment banking analyst for Raymond James & Associates, where he was actively involved in advising companies regarding initial public offerings, raising capital in both the public and private markets and merger and acquisition opportunities. Patrick graduated with a BS in finance with honors from the University of Florida and an MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University with the Health Sector Management (HSM) certificate.  Patrick volunteers at the KIPP Durham College Prep Public School in Durham, North Carolina.

Headquarters: Austin, Texas Description: Limestone Capital Advisors is an investment advisory firm based in Austin, Texas. We provide a full spectrum of investment advisory services, ranging from deal sourcing and due diligence to investment monitoring and management. We specialize in a wide variety of transaction types from direct private equity investments to asset sales and joint ventures. Additionally, we manage several early and growth stage direct-investments from our previous private equity and venture capital fund experience. “Our differentiating factor is our team’s vast experience, strong relationships, and comprehensive knowledge base that stems from decades of leadership at the highest levels of both the private and public sectors.” Recent Investments: Renoix $28.6M / Venture Zift Solutions $32M / B Series Website: www.limestoneca.com Tom Inman has over 14 years of private equity/venture capital investing experience and over 13 years of operational experience. Prior to co-founding Limestone, he served as a Principal at Gefinor Ventures, and was actively involved in evaluating new investment opportunities, performing due diligence and worked with several investments including Collider Media (acquired by Videology Group) and SiVerion (acquired by LogicVision, NASDAQ:LVGN) and serving as Interim COO at BlueSpace Software. Prior to his private equity and venture capital career, he gained valuable experience in information technology at Motorola as a business systems analyst where he led and implemented several Data Warehousing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software development and system integration projects. Prior to that, he served for over 7 years as a pilot in the U.S. Navy, earning the rank of Lieutenant and gaining valuable leadership and program management experience.