Rembrandt Venture Partners Adds Michael Baum

Michael Baum has joined early stage firm Rembrandt Venture Partners as a venture partner. Prior to joining Rembrandt he was founder and chief executive of Splunk, a “big data” software company. Michael has also co-founded Collation, which was acquired by IBM; dotBank, which was bought by Yahoo!; and Reality, which was acquired by Reuters. Earlier in his career, Baum was VP e-Commerce Services at Yahoo! and VP e-Commerce at InfoSeek/Disney.

PRESS RELEASE
Rembrandt Venture Partners, a leading early stage Silicon Valley venture capital firm, today announced the addition of Michael Baum as a Venture Partner. Michael is a technology innovator and entrepreneur who knows how to build great companies, create and win markets, and assemble “A-Player” teams. Prior to joining Rembrandt he was Founder and CEO of Splunk.

“We are excited to have Michael join our team at Rembrandt — he is a great addition to our partnership. Michael brings tremendous early stage company building experience and he is well known and well respected in the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial community. He has a natural rapport with entrepreneurs who are attracted to his experience starting and scaling great companies,” said Douglas Schrier, a General Partner at Rembrandt.

Prior to joining Rembrandt, Michael was Founder and CEO of Splunk, the “big data” software company that invented new ways to make sense of large-scale machine data. As CEO, he built a diverse and passionate team that quickly grew Splunk from an idea to a $50M, pre-IPO company, and one of the fastest growing private software companies in Silicon Valley. Under Michael’s leadership, Splunk raised $50M in venture funding, recruited a global team of more than 250 employees and developed and executed a game changing, consumer approach to enterprise marketing and sales — achieving six straight years of 100%+ growth. Splunk is now the industry standard for machine data management with more 2,600 enterprise, service provider and government agency customers in 78 countries around the world. In 2008 the company won the award for Deloitte’s fastest growing rising stars in Silicon Valley and was recognized as one of the top places to work in the Bay Area.

Michael has also co-founded Collation (acquired by IBM), dotBank (acquired by Yahoo!) and Reality (acquired by Reuters). He was a pioneer in e-commerce serving as VP e-Commerce Services at Yahoo! and VP e-Commerce at InfoSeek/Disney where he oversaw the development of the Disney Internet Group shopping platform and services.

“At Rembrandt, Michael will focus on new investment opportunities in Internet Infrastructure, Public and Private Cloud, SaaS and Enterprise IT. His addition will give us greater insight into disruptive technology opportunities and also enhance our ability to serve our existing portfolio companies,” said Richard Ling, a General Partner and Co-Founder of Rembrandt.

Michael holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he played with the Wharton Rugby Club, was President of the Venture Capital Association and now judges business plan competitions. He also earned a BS in Computer Science from Drexel University where he worked as a co-op student on the original IBM PC and on advanced complier technology at IBM’s Silicon Valley lab.

About Rembrandt Venture Partners

Rembrandt focuses on early stage technology companies in Silicon Valley where it plays an active roll in helping entrepreneurs grow companies as well as provides financing from its approximately $250 million currently under management. Since inception in 2004 Rembrandt has had numerous positive liquidity events including Cavium Networks, Good Technologies, Iron Port, LGC Wireless, MetaLincs and Casero which collectively were sold or went public for over $2.5 Billion in enterprise value. The firm pursues investments in a variety of sectors including software as a service, Internet infrastructure, communications, next generation wireless sectors and new media convergence companies. Rembrandt’s General Partners are experienced and successful Silicon Valley investors and executives who capitalize on this opportunity. The General Partners have over 90 years of venture capital investment, operational, entrepreneurial and technical experience.