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Sapphire Ventures Promotes Three to Partner, One to Principal

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sapphire Ventures has promoted four investment professionals. After a stellar 2017 year, Anders Ranum, Kevin Diestel and Rajeev Dham have been named partner, while Winter Mead has been promoted to principal.

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The investment firm says the announcement is intended to recognize each individual’s contribution to Sapphire’s recent achievements, including its 35-plus investment and five exits within the past year. Further, the promotions seek to reinforce the firm’s commitment to strengthening its investment team in order to continue supporting its industry-leading tech companies.

In September 2016, Sapphire closed its $1 billion Fund III. As of that time, the firm had over $2.5 billion in assets under management, had led nearly 50 IPOs and M&A exits since January 2011 and listed 87% of the Forbes Global 2000 on its SAP network.

“Each has worked tirelessly to support the growth of our portfolio and fund investments, and I look forward to watching them continue to lead in 2018 and help us further invest Fund III,” said Chief Executive Officer and managing director Nino Marakovic.

Ranum has worked with Sapphire since 2012, focusing on high-growth SaaS, infrastructure and cybersecurity companies. Some of his most recent notable investments include cloud platform Fastly, mobile engagement platform FollowAnalytics, and fraud prevention platform Feedzai.

Diestel has also been with the firm since 2012 and is responsible in part for launching Sapphire’s consumer practice last year, which targets high-growth consumer technology firms. Most recently he led investments in consumer genetics company 23andMe, employee engagement and analytics platform Culture Amp and meal kit delivery service Sun Basket.

Five-year employee Dham helps oversee Sapphire’s core technology investment strategy across the SaaS, fintech and digital health segments. He has led Sapphire’s investments in P2P money transfer service TransferWise and digital monitoring platform Catchpoint.

Mead, who joined the investment team in 2014, led Sapphire’s 12 fund commitments in 2017. He focuses on the firm’s fund investing business, which targets early-stage venture capital funds across enterprise, consumer and healthcare.