Charles River Ventures Adds Saar Gur as Principal and Promotes Susan Wu to Principal.

WALTHAM, Mass. and MENLO PARK, Calif. -- Charles River Ventures (CRV), one of the nation's leading early-stage venture capital firms, today announced that Saar Gur has joined the firm's West Coast office as a principal. The firm also announced that it has promoted Susan Wu to principal. Both Gur and Wu will focus on helping CRV identify and build the next generation of category-leading companies in the consumer Internet, software and services sectors.

"Saar is one of the best and brightest entrepreneurs in the Valley and we are thrilled to have him join our team," said George Zachary, general partner, Charles River Ventures. "And Susan has shown herself to be a real asset to CRV over the last year. She's played a big role in launching and managing our QuickStart seed funding program. Both Saar and Susan bring solid track records of identifying some of the industry's most promising start-ups and we are excited to add their expertise to our aggressive investment plans, particularly in the consumer Internet space."

Saar joins CRV with more than 10 years of experience working with entrepreneurs as a founder, investor and advisor. Prior to joining the firm, Saar was a co-founder of Brightroll, the world's leading Internet video advertising network. Saar also acted as an angel investor and advisor to numerous companies including RockYou, Admob, Flixster, Xobni, Lotus Vodka and Voicestar.

Prior to Brightroll, Saar was part of the senior management team of Adteractive, an online performance-based marketing company and one of the largest buyers of online media. Saar helped build Adteractive to over 175 employees and $120mm in revenues, with no outside capital. Saar was vice president of online customer acquisition and was responsible for the company P&L. Before Adteractive, Saar and his business partner raised approximately $12 million of equity capital to execute a complex private equity transaction. The project was sold within two years and returned over $30 million to investors. Saar started his career in investment banking and venture capital at Lehman Brothers. He has a biochemistry degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.B.A. from Stanford University. He is also the co-founder of carebadges.com, an online community that enables individuals to generate market awareness for the organizations and causes that they care about.

Susan joined CRV in 2006 as an associate and plays an integral role in managing CRV QuickStart, the firm's seed funding program. Susan is a member and the former CMO of the Apache Software Foundation, one of the world's most influential open source software organizations. Susan's roots in the open source community stem from her long-abiding interest in how technology catalyzes social and economic change. She began her career as the chief architect of an early, massively-multiplayer online game and has remained active in online gaming. She was the executive producer of GXMod, a widely popular, award-winning Quake 2 enhancement. Susan also contributed to components of the open source Nebula 3D graphics and game engine.

Prior to her work at Apache, Susan was the vice president of strategic alliances for Predictive Systems, a NASDAQ-listed security services firm that was acquired by International Network Services (INS) in 2003. Susan also served as the vice president of strategic development for Opus360, a provider of on-demand human resources and project management solutions. Susan co-authored Opus360's business plan, led business development activities, and helped steer the company to a public offering in 2000. Prior to Opus360, Susan was the director of development at USWeb/CKS, where she led the development and design of some of the world's first community-centric consumer Internet businesses. Susan received her BA from Tufts University and an MBA with distinction from Cornell University, where she was a Park Fellow and a Bristol Myers Squibb Fellow.

About Charles River Ventures

Founded in 1970, Charles River Ventures is one of the nation's oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms with approximately $2.1 billion under management. CRV is dedicated to helping exceptional entrepreneurs turn their ideas into the next category leaders in high growth technology and media sectors. Over the past 10 years, CRV funds have been ranked among the industry's top performers. CRV has offices in Boston, MA and Menlo Park, CA. For more information visit www.crv.com.