- Later-stage venture capital and growth equity firm IVP has announced it added three people to its investment team including James Black, Becca Faust, and Karthik Ramakrishnan
IVP — a premier later-stage venture capital and growth equity firm with $7 billion of committed capital — announced it has added three new additions to its investment team including James Black, Becca Faust, and Karthik Ramakrishnan.
Black is joining IVP from Qatalyst Partners and Canva, Faust is joining from Goldman Sachs, and Karthik Ramakrishnan is joining from Qatalyst Partners and Choosy. This team is bringing operational and investment banking experience to the firm and will focus on identifying and evaluating later-stage consumer and enterprise technology investments.
“We continue to attract exceptional talent and James, Becca, and Karthik are great additions to our team,” said IVP general partner Sandy Miller in a statement. “We are incredibly impressed with their passion for both growth-stage technology companies and the venture capital industry. We are delighted to welcome them to the firm.”
While at Canva, Black empowered the world to design anything and publish anywhere. And Black worked on the strategic finance team and led projects across fundraising, business development, product strategy, and analytics. Plus he was also an investment banker at Qatalyst Partners, advising on over $50 billion worth of announced M&A transactions including Citrix’s GoTo Business RMT with LogMeIn, Imperva’s sale to Thoma Bravo, NXP’s proposed sale to Qualcomm, and Shipt’s sale to Target. Black graduated Magna Cum Laude from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned a B.S. in Economics with concentrations in finance and operations.
Before joining IVP, Faust worked at Goldman Sachs’ Technology, Media, and Telecommunications investment banking group. At Goldman Sachs, Faust helped to advise a number of clients on both equity financings and M&A transactions including Twilio’s convertible debt issuance, follow-on equity offering, and the acquisition of SendGrid, Dassault Systèmes’ acquisition of IQMS, and the sale of TSheets to Intuit. And Faust holds a B.A. from Yale University where she graduated Summa Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa with distinction in History.
Ramakrishnan worked at Choosy before IVP, which is a direct-to-consumer women’s fashion startup where he assisted the founders on numerous cross-functional projects across strategy, operations, finance, marketing, and customer experience. Plus Ramakrishnan worked at Qatalyst Partners where he advised clients across the consumer Internet, mobile, enterprise software, and hardware sectors. And his transaction experience includes PillPack’s sale to Amazon, Cavium’s $6.7 billion sale to Marvell Technology, InvenSense’s $1.3 billion sale to TDK Corporation, and Lithium Technologies’ sale to Vista Equity Partners. Karthik had graduated Summa Cum Laude from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business where he earned a double B.S. in Finance and Economics.
Currently, IVP is investing IVP XVI — which is a $1.5 billion later-stage venture capital and growth equity fund — and is managing $7 billion in committed capital. Since being founded in 1980, IVP has invested in over 400 companies and 111 have gone public. IVP’s is generally a lead investor in later-stage rounds with equity investments ranging from $10 to $100 million.
