Austin Ventures Promotes Basil Horangic and Venu Shamapant to General Partner; Horangic and Shamapant to Lead Firm in Systems and Semiconductor Investments.

AUSTIN, Texas -- Austin Ventures, a leading venture capital firm, today announced the promotions of two members of the company's investment professional team. Basil Horangic and Venu Shamapant were both promoted to the position of general partner.

"In recognition of their significant contributions to our portfolio investments and to Austin Ventures, we are pleased to announce the promotions of Basil and Venu to the role of general partner," said John Thornton, general partner, Austin Ventures. "Both individuals have played critical roles in helping to build and position valuable portfolio companies in our hardware practice area. As general partners, they will play an integral role representing the next generation of Austin Ventures leadership."

Horangic has been with Austin Ventures four years and focuses primarily on systems and semiconductor investing. Previously, he spent three years at Oak Investment Partners, where he sourced and helped develop a number of successful hardware projects including Springtide (Lucent), Telica (Lucent), and Coretek (Nortel). Basil also helped manage software and services investments such as Entevo (Bindview), Vicinity (Microsoft), iMarket (D&B), and TheStreet.com. He spent his early career at McKinsey, Goldman Sachs, and a PhD program at the University of Chicago.

At Austin Ventures, Basil has worked with companies such as Alereon, Azul Systems, Copan Systems, Conformative Systems, Egenera, Nascentric, and Pyxis Technologies. "Basil led our second round of financing at a critical time in Egenera's history. He has been a trusted advisor on strategic and operating issues from day one," said Vern Brownell, founder of Egenera.

Basil received his MBA from the University of Chicago and a Masters in Operations Research from MIT. He has undergraduate degrees in Computer Science and in Economics from MIT.

Shamapant has been with the firm for more than five years and focuses on investing in systems and semiconductor companies. Previously, Venu served as vice president of business development for Telecom Technologies, Incorporated. Prior to that, he was an engagement manager with McKinsey, and focused on clients in the communications and software industries. Venu also served as an engineering lead at Mentor Graphics.

At Austin Ventures, Venu has worked with companies such as D2 Audio, Britestream Networks, Lifesize Communications, Navini Networks, Prophesi Technologies, and Spatial Wireless. "From introducing the founding team to securing our initial technology license and anchoring our Series A funding with Austin Ventures, Venu has been critical to the success of our firm," said Pardeep Kohli, founder and CEO, Spatial Wireless.

Venu received his MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, an MS in computer engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and a BS in electronics and communications engineering from Osmania University, India.

About Austin Ventures

Austin Ventures has been working with talented entrepreneurs to build valuable companies since 1979. With $2.4 billion under management, AV is the most active venture capital firm in Texas, and one of the most established in the nation. With a focus on enterprise software, computer and communications hardware, and business services, Austin Ventures invests at all stages of company development, from $100,000 "planned experiments" to $50+ million investments in management buyouts.

Austin Ventures is the most active early-stage systems and semiconductor investor in Texas. Some of its prominent hardware investments include Agere (Lucent), Benchmarq (Texas Instruments), Crystal Semiconductor (Cirrus), Crossroads Systems, Cygnal (Silicon Labs), McData, Silicon Labs, Spatial Wireless, Staktek, Synoptics (Nortel), and Vtel (Nortel).