Amplify Partners Announces Major Team Expansion

MENLO PARK, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 23, 2017) - Amplify Partners, a premier early-stage venture capital firm focused on the next generation of IT infrastructure and data-driven technology, today announced a number of significant changes to its investment team.

Amplify Promotes David Beyer to Partner

"We are pleased to announce David Beyer's promotion," said Sunil Dhaliwal, General Partner, Amplify Partners. "David has made major contributions to Amplify and its portfolio companies since joining the firm in 2013. His promotion to Partner is a well-deserved recognition of his success."

"Amplify has given me the opportunity to work with the brightest minds in distributed systems, machine learning and cyber security," said Beyer. "Helping visionary founders build amazing companies continually inspires me." He added, "I'm honored by the opportunity to work alongside my Amplify colleagues in service of that vision."

Amplify Expands Investment Team, Adds Lenny Pruss as Partner

"Lenny is one of venture capital's rising stars," said Mike Dauber, General Partner, Amplify Partners. "Over the years he has consistently impressed us with his ability to identify extraordinary entrepreneurs working to solve important problems."

During his career, Pruss has worked with extraordinary founders solving complex technical problems across cloud infrastructure, developer tooling, information security and emerging enterprise technologies. Prior to joining Amplify Partners, he was a Principal with Redpoint Ventures. Pruss began his career with RRE Ventures in New York. He has led investments in, and worked with companies including, HashiCorp, Cockroach Labs, Datadog and Whiptail (acquired by Cisco). He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS with Honors from UC Berkeley.

"My approach to early-stage investing has always matched the Amplify model," said Pruss. "Deep market expertise, a willingness to invest early, and a passion for technical founders is the winning formula." He added, "It has been amazing to see the reputation and portfolio that Amplify has developed in such a short amount of time, and I look forward to building on that success."

Amplify Grows Portfolio Services Team, Adds Ted Stinson as Executive in Residence

Stinson will be working closely with the Amplify's founders to develop sales and go-to-market expertise. "Ted is a talented sales leader who understands how to take new technologies to market and build winning sales teams," said Dauber. "We have already seen Ted have a tremendous impact on our portfolio's go-to-market readiness, and look forward to seeing his impact on revenue growth across the portfolio."

Prior to joining Amplify, Stinson was responsible for all business operations at tCell. Previously, he served as the VP of Worldwide Sales at PernixData and held leadership positions at Symantec and VERITAS. Stinson received a BA from University of Notre Dame and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Amplify Builds Technical Expertise, Adds Dr. Evan Sparks as Entrepreneur in Residence

The Amplify team welcomes Dr. Evan Sparks, a recent Computer Science graduate from the UC Berkeley AMPLab, as the firm's new Entrepreneur in Residence.

"Evan is an accomplished technologist with deep expertise in machine learning. We're thrilled to have him develop a new startup idea with us, while also growing the firm's network and expertise," said Dhaliwal.

Dr. Sparks has contributed to the design and implementation of much of the large scale machine learning ecosystem around Apache Spark, including MLlib and KeystoneML, and is the author of numerous scientific publications. Prior to Berkeley, he worked as a Quantitative Analyst at MDT Advisers and on the analytics team at Recorded Future. Dr. Sparks also holds an M.S. from UC Berkeley, and an A.B. in Computer Science from Dartmouth College.

ABOUT AMPLIFY PARTNERS

Amplify Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm that works side by side with first-time founders and serial entrepreneurs to transform their groundbreaking ideas into companies that win. Over thirty five founding teams in infrastructure and data-driven technology have selected Amplify as their partner on the path to success. With expertise gained from decades of experience, the Amplify team provides critical help with engaging early customers, establishing product-market fit and attracting the right talent to build companies that win.

To learn more about Amplify and its portfolio companies, please visit www.amplifypartners.com, follow us on Twitter: @amplifypartners, or contact info@amplifypartners.com