The slow and steady exodus of executives from Google (GOOG) has been in progress for a while now. Today, two senior members of the corporate development team left Googleplex for good, to start a new venture fund, Merus Capital.
Salman Ullah, Google’s vice president of corporate development; Sean Dempsey, principal at Google’s corporate development group and Peter Hsing, a general manager of corporate strategy at Microsoft have teamed up to start this new fund.
The news first reported by VentureBeat as Copper River Ventures. The fund is going to focus on small early stage deals. Of course, it helps that like Ullah and Dempsey, many Googlers are leaving the company to rev-up their own start-ups. Merus, which means pure in latin, could be assured of a steady deal flow.
3 trackbacks so far
5:59 PM PT
[...] profile says Copper River Partners, a commenter says the name is actually Merus Capital — Om confirms this, and also says Ullah will be joined by Sean Dempsey, also of Google’s corporate development [...]
2:29 PM PT
[...] development group, will be going along. Otherwise, not much is known about Merus, but Om Malik states that it “is going to focus on small early stage [...]
11:25 AM PT
[...] Malik, Tuesday, June 3, 2008 at 11:10 AM PT Comments (0) Google’s senior executive exodus continues. YouTube’s head of monetization, Shashi Seth, has now left the company to become [...]
3 comments so far
6:27 PM PT
thats the way to go.
8:30 PM PT
With the stock as high as it is, we’re no doubt going to be seeing many more ex-Googlies in the months to come. But when it comes to VC firms, what are they doing for the little guys out there. Well, very little, of course - unless the “little guy” has the right connections.
I have my own ideas about how to give the little guy a bit more leverage in the race to gain at least a little more weight. I posted this idea on my blog - My Good Idea - yesterday. The idea is for the taking, I’m curious if anyone thinks it has any merit.
Check it out
11:31 PM PT
@Brainwave
Good idea. It does make sense and allows many rich people to just take a piece of their monthly income from other passive investments and invest them.
That said the legal issues are probably the wrinkle here, that is if you have over 95 investors. I can’t remember the specific reasons but that number stands out - it may have to do with extensive filings…..
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