VCs on the Move Jul 1, 2015

Tavel, who had early conviction about Pinterest, to join Greylock

Greylock Partners announced that Sarah Tavel will join the firm as an investment partner beginning Aug. 31.

Tavel was a onetime vice president with Bessemer Venture Partners and worked on that firm’s investments in Pinterest, Metalogix, Yodle and Onestop, among others. Tavel left Bessemer in 2012 to join Pinterest and has been serving most recently as product manager for the company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Bessemer led a Series A round in Pinterest in 2011.

Tavel “saw things in Pinterest that we missed,” wrote Greylock Partners David Sze and James Slavet in a blog post. “While at Bessemer Venture Partners, Sarah had a great deal of conviction about Pinterest—long before it became an obvious breakout business. For Bessemer, she turned this conviction into one of the best consumer investments in the last five years.”

Tavel also blogged about her time as a “Pinployee” at Pinterest and her joining Greylock.

At Greylock, she will focus on working with early-stage entrepreneurs to help build products, platforms, networks, and marketplaces that enable new forms of communication, media, and commerce. The firm said she will also cross over between consumer and vertical SaaS/B2B software-driven companies, given her experience at Bessemer helping drive investments in Cornerstone onDemand, MindBody and others. –Alastair Goldfisher

Homebrew hires head of talent

San Francisco-based Homebrew, which in February raised $85 million in new funds to make early-stage and growth investments, announced it has hired Beth Scheer as its head of talent.

Homebrew said in its blog post that Scheer will work closely with its portfolio companies to “help them establish their talent processes and to fill key positions,” primarily in engineering.

Scheer was previously at Salesforce, where she most recently served as head of executive recruiting, according to her LinkedIn profile. Prior to Salesforce, she was lead recruiter for engineering at Google. –Alastair Goldfisher

Former Eloqua chief architect joins Bessemer as firm boosts staff

Umair Akeel, the onetime chief architect of Eloqua during its IPO and subsequent acquisition by Oracle, has joined Bessemer Venture Partners as CTO-in-residence (CTO-IR) and operating partner. Akeel will serve as a tech resource for all Bessemer portfolio companies and help the firm analyze trends and products worldwide.

Bessemer was an investor in Eloqua as well as Trigo Technologies, Akeel’s previous company in which he was a software engineer and then a senior architect at IBM following its acquisition of Trigo.

Bessemer, which in February wrapped up its ninth fund with $1.6 billion in commitments, has made a number of other personnel moves recently.

In late May, the firm announced it promoted Charles Birnbaum to vice president. Birnbaum will help lead the firm’s New York office. Birnbaum joined Bessemer in 2013. He focuses on financial services, education, Internet of Things and consumer Internet sectors.

His investments include August Home, Quantopian, OMsignal, Abacus, BrightBytes and Main Street Hub.

In addition, Bessemer promoted Kristina Shen from investment professional to vice president. Shen, who joined the Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm in 2013, has focused on cloud-computing and Internet deals, serving as a board observer at GainSight, Vidyard and DoubleDutch, among others, according to her LinkedIn profile. –Alastair Goldfisher

Lee leaves SV Angel

David Lee has left SV Angel, the seed fund he joined eight years ago and ran alongside angel Ron Conway. No explanation for the departure was readily available.

Lee, who formerly was with Baseline Ventures and Google, said in a tweet he wanted to spend more time with his wife and children in Los Angeles. “After a great run at @svangel, I’m on to life’s next chapter,” said another of Lee’s tweets.

A letter to limited partners said Conway and son Topher Conway would run the firm as co-managing partners. –Mark Boslet

Dropbox employee Fushman joins Index

Index Ventures has named Ilya Fushman a general partner.

Fushman, who was head of product, business and mobile at the file storage company, was one of the first 75 employees at Dropbox, which is a portfolio company of Index. He had been with Dropbox since 2011.

In announcing the hire, Index didn’t say what Fushman would focus on. But it’s assumed he will work out of the firm’s San Francisco-based office. Index last year raised about $542 million for its latest early-stage fund. In April, Index raised about $706 million for a growth-stage fund.

Fushman also blogged about his joining Index, in which he referenced the firm’s investments in platforms, marketplaces, gaming, enterprise software, data science, payments, infrastructure, agriculture and food, devices and the Internet of Things.

“I look forward to joining the Index team and pursuing their mission to build amazing products, companies, and experiences for billions of people around the world,” he wrote. –Alastair Goldfisher

RRE Ventures recruits Rishi as GP

New York City-based venture firm RRE Ventures has hired Raju Rishi as a general partner and promoted Alice Lloyd George to associate.

Prior to joining RRE, Rishi was a venture partner at Sigma Prime Ventures while Lloyd George worked at Signia Venture Partners and Bridgewater Associates. She also lived in Beijing conducting research as a Brookings Institute fellow. –Iris Dorbian

OpenView beefs up team with promotions and hires

OpenView Venture Partners has promoted Blake Bartlett, Mackey Craven, Devon McDonald and Ricky Pelletier each to partner.

Bartlett joined the firm in 2013 as a vice president while Craven came on board the same year as an associate. McDonald joined OpenView in 2009 and Pelletier has been with the firm since 2011.

In addition, Jim Baum has joined the Boston-based firm as a venture partner. Previously, Baum was the president and CEO of Netezza.

OpenView also hired Kelsey Heavey as analyst, Allie Letourneau as senior accountant and Gail Axelrod as PR and community manager. Previously, Heavey worked at Fiksu; Letourneau was at PricewaterhouseCoopers; and Axelrod worked at BetterCloud. –Iris Dorbian