Palomar Ventures

Palomar Ventures is a Los Angeles-area venture capital firm launched in 1999 by veteran venture capitalists focused on early-stage information technology companies with the potential for exceptional growth and market leadership. Headquartered in Santa Monica, California, the firm invested across three institutional funds culminating in Palomar III, a $225 million vehicle that brought cumulative capital under management to more than $500 million. Managing Director Jim Gauer led the firm with Chief Financial Officer Lisa Riedmiller, and across Palomar's lifetime its partners contributed to building nearly 50 public companies. Palomar's investment thesis centered on identifying disruptive, scalable IT businesses from the earliest stages, concentrating on infrastructure software, networking and telecom infrastructure, next-generation storage, wireless solutions, and security. Typical new investments were $2 million to $5 million, and the firm led or co-led rounds early in value formation, working closely with founders on strategy, corporate development, and executive recruiting. Palomar has made 124 investments and recorded 38 exits, including Composite Software (acquired by Cisco Systems in June 2013), Paymetric, Ace Metrix, and MyBuys. The firm's most recent publicly recorded new-money investment was in Predixion Software's Series D in April 2015. Since 2015 Palomar has been managing its legacy portfolio rather than raising or deploying a new fund. Its historical strength in enterprise software and network infrastructure gave it a strong track record across the dot-com and post-crash eras, and the firm's partners remain respected figures in the Southern California and broader US technology investment community.