VCs on the Move, January 2013

Moving In…

Dafina Toncheva has joined early-stage venture firm U.S. Venture Partners as a partner. Toncheva, who will focus on enterprise, software-as-a-service and security software, joins USVP from Tugboat Ventures. She was a principal investor at Tugboat from 2010. Prior to Tugboat, she spent two years at Venrock.

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Jim Budzynski has joined Open Prairie Ventures as a venture partner. Budzynski is the managing principal of MacroGain Partners, a Carmel, Ind.-based firm focused on venture and private equity investments in the agricultural, food and energy sectors. At Open Prairie, Budzynski will help identify investment opportunities for the OPV III Fund, which will launch in January 2013. He will also manage some existing investments in the Open Prairie Ventures II Fund. Formed in 1999, Open Prairie is an early-stage venture firm with offices in Illinois, Kansas and Michigan.

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Sigma Prime Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm, has brought aboard John Simon as a managing director. Simon was most recently a managing director at General Catalyst Partners, which he co-founded. Sigma Prime Ventures has offices in Boston and New York.

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Silicon Valley Bank has appointed Bindi Karia to the bank’s U.K.-based branch to lead its efforts in the early-stage accelerator space. Karia, currently the venture capital/emerging business lead at Microsoft UK, will begin the newly created role in January 2013.

Moving Up…

The Boston-based venture firm Highland Capital Partners has promoted Manish Patel to partner at its office in Menlo Park, Calif. Patel joined Highland as a principal in 2010 after logging seven year at Google where he worked in product management, leading Google’s advanced imagery and 3D mapping programs. His investments at Highland have focused on consumer Internet, mobile and digital media companies, including motion-control software and hardware company Leap Motion and HTML5 game development startup Game Closure. Along with the addition of Manish to its partner team, Alex Taussig, a principal at Highland since 2009, recently relocated to Menlo Park.

Compiled by Clancy Nolan.