Ross Fubini, formerly of Kapor Capital, has joined Canaan Partners as a venture partner.
At Kapor, Fubini led investments in Piazza, CitrusLane, GingerIO, KarmaLoop, and others. His resume also includes positions at a number of startups that went on to do big things, including Netscape, Tellme, and Plumtree. He co-founded social software startup CubeTree, which was acquired by SuccessFactors in 2010 — after the acquisition, Fubini served as vice president. And he’s an advisor to Palantir Technologies and Causes. (In the press release, Palantir’s Shyam Sankar says Fubini helped Palantir “scale to what it is today.”)
By moving to Canaan, Fubini is shifting his focus from seed investing to Series A and later. At the same time, he told me via email that his seed experience should help him in his new role, as should his experience as a technologist. He added that he plans to invest in companies that tap into the consumerization of enterprise trend, where enterprise products start to look more and more like consumer apps. He added:
As an aside, the consumerization of IT isn’t really the right story. The right story is how consumers are now able to act like and get the resources previously only available to companies. You can acquire leads (UrbanSitter, Odesk, Uber); you can diverse your assets (WealthFront, LendingClub, FinancialEngines); you can choose the tools to do your jobs instead of a distant IT head (Optimizely, MailChip, Clearslide).
Canaan raised a $600 million fund (the firm’s ninth) at the beginning of this year. Recent investments that we’ve covered include adverCar, Borro, and UrbanSitter.