Board of Directors
Mark Silverman
Managing Director
Mark Silverman joined Catamount Ventures as a Managing Director in 2006 after working with Jed Smith on a number of successful ventures. He plays an integral role in the building and managing of current portfolio companies, seeking new investments, and continuing to provide significant returns to limited partners. Mark serves on a number of boards including Bocada, DriverSide, Ecohaus, Grid Net, Nest Collective, Real Time Genomics, TransCella, and Verdiem. For nearly 18 years prior to joining the Catamount team, Mark was immersed in advising, founding, building and financing early stage companies.
Most recently, Mark co-founded and served as President and CEO of Bocada, Inc., an enterprise storage software company. Prior to Bocada, Mark was Vice President, Business Development and Health Services and General Counsel for drugstore.com where he was responsible for building key relationships with ecommerce and healthcare industry leaders, as well as for managing the company’s pharmacy, health services and legal operations.
Prior to drugstore.com, Mark was a Partner at Venture Law Group in Menlo Park, CA. In addition to providing legal and business services for dozens of start-ups, Mark was one of three partners who lead Venture Law Group’s successful venture capital investing practice. Prior to Venture Law Group, Mark practiced law for several years at Davis, Polk & Wardwell in New York, New York.
Silverman holds a J.D. from the University of California at Los Angeles and a B.A. in History from the University of California at Berkeley.
Nancy Hurley
President and Chief Executive Officer
Nancy is a seasoned sales and marketing executive, with over 20 years experience in the storage, communications, and networking industries. Prior to joining Bocada, Nancy was Senior Director of Storage Software Marketing for Sun Microsystems. Before Sun, she was a senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) where she provided strategic consulting to vendors in the storage software and infrastructure markets. Prior to ESG, she served as the Worldwide Strategic Planning Manager for Tektronix Communications Test Group and was with Hewlett Packard for 10 years in various senior sales and marketing roles.
Nancy holds a B.S.E.E. from Syracuse University.
Greg Gottesman
Managing Director
Madrona Venture Group
Board Member
Greg joined Madrona in 1997 and currently serves on the boards of AdReady, Bocada, BuddyTV, Cheezburger, Decide, Intrepid Learning Solutions, Nimbic, ThinkFire, and WildTangent. He is also the founder and interim CEO of A Place for Rover.
Greg managed the firm's investments in Dantz Development Corporation (prior to its acquisition by EMC), Rendition Networks (prior to its acquisition by Opsware), Singingfish.com (prior to its acquisition by Thomson Consumer Electronics), LiveBid.com (prior to its acquisition by Amazon.com), and AdRelevance (prior to its acquisition by Media Metrix). Before joining Madrona, he worked as an Associate of the Boston Consulting Group.
Greg serves on the board of Startup Weekend, the Evergreen Venture Capital Association, and is an advisory board member of the University of Washington Technology Transfer Office and Boeing Technology Alliance. Greg was previously a board member of the Mercer Island Schools Foundations and the Seattle Repertory Theatre. He is the author of three books. Greg is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of Washington Business School, where he teaches a class with fellow Managing Director Matt McIlwain on entrepreneurship. When not working, he spends time with his wife and three kids, watches too much reality TV, and regularly injures himself playing non-contact sports.
Greg graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction from Stanford University, with honors and distinction from the Harvard Business School, and with honors from Harvard Law School where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review.
Pete Higgins
Board Observer
Pete Higgins is a founding partner of Second Avenue Partners, one of Seattle's most experienced teams providing management, strategy and capital to early-stage companies. Prior to founding Second Avenue Partners, Pete spent 16 years at Microsoft Corporation. Pete was a member of the Office of the President, reporting to CEO Bill Gates. He was group vice president of the Interactive Media Group at Microsoft from 1996 to 1998. As head of the Interactive Media Group, he was responsible for Microsoft's online and consumer software businesses, including MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, Carpoint, Slate, Internet Gaming Zone, Encarta, multimedia games, desktop finance product, and hardware products such as the Microsoft Mouse. Pete also serves on the Board of Trustees for Stanford University. He is a past board member of the Washington Software Association and the Software Publishers Association.
Pete holds an M.B.A. and an undergraduate degree in economics and history from Stanford University.
Jed Smith
Board Observer
Jed is the Managing Partner of Catamount Ventures. Catamount was founded to focus on the underserved seed/early stage venture investment market. Catamount has recently started investing its second fund. Prior to Catamount, in 1997 Jed was the founder of drugstore.com and served on its board of directors. Prior to drugstore.com, Jed co-founded Cybersmith, a retail store chain that showcased the latest advances in information technology and multimedia software. Before Cybersmith, Jed was Vice President of Sales at Tribe Computer Works (a networking hardware and software company that was ultimately acquired by IBM). Jed began his career in technology working at Oracle Corp where he served as District Manager for Eastern Region VARs.
Jed holds a B.A. from Middlebury College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
