Redpoint Ventures has appointed Satish Dharmaraj as partner in software and technology infrastructure and Dr Nety Krishna as venture partner and CTO of the energy, materials and environ
Redpoint Ventures has appointed Satish Dharmaraj as partner in software and technology infrastructure and Dr Nety Krishna as venture partner and CTO of the energy, materials and environment practice.
Dharmaraj (pictured) was the chief executive and founder of groupware innovator Zimbra, acquired by Yahoo!, and was on the founding team of OneBox Systems, acquired by Phone.com.
‘This is a great time to invest in software,’ says Dharmaraj. ‘Numerous disruptive forces, including open source, virtualization, the software as a service model, and cloud computing, are driving fundamental change within enterprise IT. These changes will allow many companies to re-target their capital and focus operational expenditures on their core competencies, rather than on IT infrastructure.’
Prior to OneBox, Dharmaraj was with Sun Microsystems’ JavaSoft Division where he was a key driver in the development and establishment of Java Servlets and JSPs as an industry standard. Before Sun, he held several product and engineering positions at IBM and Transarc Corporations.
He serves on several boards and advisory boards, and has been an angel investor in early stage technology startups. Dharmaraj has worked with Redpoint partners for nearly a decade through his experience with OneBox and Zimbra, which was incubated at Redpoint.
Dr. Krishna joins Redpoint from Applied Materials where he worked in the office of the CTO. In that role, Dr. Krishna was a leader in technology and partnership development within the energy and environment sectors. He played a key role in defining the strategy and initiated advanced technology projects in energy generation, storage, and efficiency.
Prior to Applied Materials, Dr. Krishna led research activities in high energy physics at the University of Colorado and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.
As CTO for Redpoint’s energy, materials and environment practice, Dr. Krishna will work with entrepreneurs to develop and scale their innovations which have the potential to significantly impact the economics of energy industries over the long term.
‘This is the first time a venture capital firm has created a CTO position in energy and materials,’ says John Walecka, Redpoint founding partner. ‘It’s a significant role because the technologies needed to scale advanced materials, which are key to new energy and environment breakthroughs, are quite complex; moreover, the manufacturing innovations required to drive down costs and make these breakthroughs commercially viable are very critical.’
