Seasoned venture investors and operators.
Sherman Atkinson
Managing-Director
Sherman joined Miramar in 2011 and focuses on early stage, Digital Media investing, with a particular emphasis on social media, online advertising and new forms of e-commerce. Previously, Sherman was with Austin Ventures, where he was a CEO-In-Residence in their Growth Equity Practice. Prior to Austin Ventures, Sherman spent 17 years as an operator and an entrepreneur in the new media and e-commerce sectors. He served as the Chief Operating Officer of Intermix Media, Inc. (AMEX: MIX), - incubator of MySpace.com. As part of the turn-around team, Sherman helped develop a number of new Internet media properties and also served as the President of Intermix Network, one of the largest Advertising Networks in 2005. During his tenure as COO, Intermix was acquired by News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) for $673 million. Prior to joining Intermix, Sherman served as the Chief Operating Officer of Buy.com and President of BuyServices, Inc. Sherman received his BA in Russian from Purdue University. He also served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps and spent five years as a consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton.
Bob Holmen
Managing-Director
Bob Holmen is a co-founder of Miramar Venture Partners. Bob has spent his career building technology companies in the healthcare and information technology markets. He has served in diverse roles, from software engineer at Hughes Aircraft to senior executive roles at technology and life sciences companies to venture investor. Currently, Bob serves on the Boards of Miramar portfolio companies Matrix Sensors and Predixion Software. Past Miramar portfolio company Board memberships include Fastsoft (acquired by Akamai) and SiliconSystems (acquired by Western Digital Corporation). Bob also serves as Adjunct Professor, teaching graduate courses on Venture Capital. Currently, he teaches “Venture Capital Law” at the UC Irvine School of Law. From 2012-14, he taught “Investing in New Ventures” in the MBA Program at the USC Marshall School of Business. Bob received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1985, serving as an officer of the national engineering honor society at Stanford. He received his J.D. from UC Berkeley in 1989. Bob serves on the Board of Life College, a post-secondary school dedicated to helping young adults with disabilities transition to independent life and employment.
Bruce Hallett
Managing-Director
Bruce Hallett is a co-founder of Miramar Venture Partners and brings his enthusiasm for innovation, product strategy and team building to Miramar’s portfolio of tech startup companies. With over two decades of collaborations with technology entrepreneurs, Bruce leads Miramar investments in mobile Internet solutions and software. Currently, Bruce serves on the boards of Scripsense and WellTok. He also served on the board of directors of Aktino (acquired by Positron), Berkana Wireless (acquired by Qualcomm), OptionEase (acquired by Solium) and RealPractice (acquired by ReachLocal). Prior to founding Miramar, Bruce was Managing Partner of the Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison Orange County office, where he managed IPOs, venture financings and liquidity events for many high profile technology companies in Southern California including Broadcom, Buy.com, Exult and Applied Semantics (acquired by Google in 2003). Bruce was one of seven partners on Brobeck’s firm-wide executive committee until he started Miramar in 2001. Bruce received his BA magna cum laude from UC Irvine and his JD from UCLA. From 2007-2010, he was Chair of the Chief Executive Roundtable at UC Irvine and from 2010-2012 Bruce served as UC Alumni Regent on the Board of Regents of the University of California. He is currently President of the UC Irvine Alumni Association and also serves on UC President Napolitano’s Innovation Council and is a member of the UCLA Venture Fund.
Heiner Sussner
Managing-Director
Heiner focuses on storage and cloud related investments for Miramar. He serves on the Board of Directors of Miramar portfolio companies AccelOps, IMT, Jeda Networks and Matrix Sensors, and previously served on the Boards of Azuro (acquired by Cadence), FastSoft (acquired by Akamai), Protego Networks (acquired by Cisco) and SiliconSystems (acquired by Western Digital). He also led Miramar's investments in CloudVolumes (acquired by VMware) and Tempo.ai (acquired by Salesforce.com). Prior to joining Miramar, he was a Senior Managing Director of H&Q Asia Pacific, where he was responsible for technology investments in Asia and Silicon Valley and served on the boards of several technology start-ups including Headway Technology (acquired by TDK in 2000). Heiner started his professional career at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart and joined IBM Research in San Jose,California in 1980 working on advanced recording technology. In 1986, he became Director of Storage Systems and Technology for IBM Research and in 1992 joined IBM Europe in Paris where he became co-founder and Director of IBM Europe's corporate venture group. In 1996, Heiner joined Phase Metrics Corporation, a venture-backed data storage company based in San Diego, California, as Chief Technical Officer responsible for R&D and product development. Heiner is a graduate of the Technical University of Munich and received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1976 for his work at the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique in Grenoble,France and the University of Konstanz, Germany. He is author of numerous scientific publications, holds several patents and was awarded the 1994 IEEE Medal for Engineering Excellence.
Armond Hairapetian
Entrepreneur-In-Residence
Armond is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Miramar Venture Partners. Armond brings to Miramar more than 17 years of technical and general management experience and will help the firm form new companies around specific product plans and technologies as well as evaluate markets, technologies and business plans in connection with Miramar’s general investment activity. Most recently, Armond was the General Manager of the optical products division of Broadcom Corporation, the leading supplier of 10G transceiver ICs for optical communications. Prior to that, Armond was the co-founder and CEO of venture-backed NewPort Communications where he led the engineering effort in developing the world’s first OC-48 and OC-192 transceivers in CMOS, and the ultimate sale of the company to Broadcom in August 2000 for approximately $1.2 billion. Prior to founding NewPort, Armond held various senior level engineering positions at Rockwell Semiconductor, Sierra Semiconductor and Siemens Pacesetter. Armond received his BS, MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA. He also holds a Masters in Financial Engineering from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Armond holds several patents and was awarded UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award in 2008.
Ed Milstein
Entrepreneur-In-Residence
As an EIR for Miramar Digital Ventures, Ed focuses on deal sourcing early-stage tech companies in the Rocky Mountain region. Ed has experienced all sides of the entrepreneurial eco-system as a successful founder/CEO and angel investor. Ed is an energized and engaged advisor and mentor sharing his wealth of operational experience and enthusiasm for building great teams. Ed is an active advisor for many startups and serves as a Director for Field Squared, Inc., a Miramar Digital Ventures portfolio company. As the founder and CEO for Compute and Network Intensive, Inc., an internet startup in Southern California, Ed achieved stellar growth. The company grew 5400% over 5 years before selling to Verio in 1998. While at Verio, Ed held positions as Regional VP and CIO. In 2000, Ed took the helm of a Denver-based, VC-backed startup in the online job space. Ed received a BS in Chemical Engineering from NJIT.
Steve Yamamoto
Entrepreneur-In-Residence
Steve is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Miramar Venture Partners focused on deal sourcing, new market assessment, and providing strategic and operational support for Miramar portfolio companies. Steve brings to Miramar over 15 years of senior leadership experience in general management, technology operations, and strategic M&A. Steve joined Miramar from Qualcomm where he served in several executive positions, most recently as Vice President of Business Development responsible for strategic acquisitions in the areas of Software as a Service and Data Analytics. Prior to this, Steve served as Vice President of Operations where he was responsible for network operations, supply chain, program management, as well as business units in Europe and LatAm, leading a worldwide organization of over 400 people. Steve began his career in various engineering and product management roles at Phase Metrics, a venture-backed data storage company acquired by KLA-Tencor in 2001. Steve later became the general manager of KLA-Tencor’s surface metrology and data storage divisions where he initiated new programs in adjacent markets such as MEMS and laboratory R&D. Steve earned his Ph.D. in Physics from UCSD where he was a UC Regents Scholar and General Atomics Fellow. He also holds an MBA from SDSU.
What we do
Miramar Ventures is a seed & early stage investment firm. Uniquely focused on funding the promising founders and market disruptive ideas in the modern mobile sector. Since our inception in 2002, Miramar Ventures has partnered with leading entrepreneurs to transform game changing ideas into capital efficient, profitable businesses.
Investment Focus
We are seeking companies that are as market driven as they are technology drive, with proprietary and defensible technology positions yielding a competitive edge and barrier to entry, and are led by management teams with the experience, dedication and high sense of urgency to succeed at their endeavors.
Our Sectors
Miramar Ventures is seeking seed & early stage investment opportunities with high growth potential. The sectors we focus on include:
Artificial Intelligence
Big Data
IoT
Native Advertising
Stage of Investing
We typically write our first checks at the Seed or Series A round, reserving follow-on capital for future rounds of financing. On occasion we will invest in the Series B stage but our normal entry point is as one of the first institutional investors.
Portfolio Construction
Each of our funds are traditionally made up of 15-25 portfolio companies. We average around 5-8 new seed investments every year with follow-on capital reserved for existing portfolio companies. Miramar Ventures is actively investing out of Fund III, Miramar Digital Ventures. We invest nationwide but focus our efforts on big business ideas primarily in Southern California, the Intermountain West and Southwest regions.