Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Rich Miner to Co-Lead Google Ventures from Cambridge

Some nifty news this morning from Google: they've formed Google Ventures, which will invest up to $100 million over the next year, according to The New York Times. Bill Maris is the managing partner of Google Ventures based in the company's Mountain View headquarters, and Rich Miner is the managing partner in the Cambridge office.

On the official Google blog, they explain:

    At its core, Google Ventures is charged with finding and helping to develop exceptional start-ups. We'll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven't thought of yet. Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.

Rich Miner has been an R&D exec at Avid Technology, Wildfire Communications, and Orange. He then co-founded Android, which Google acquired in 2005 -- and which led Google into the mobile phone business.

While Miner is extremely well-networked in town, it's not clear whether he's done any investing before (I never hear his name mentioned as a local angel, for instance.)

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