With the convergence of Utah Ventures/UV Partners and Novell Ventures and the evolution of the firm, we felt now was the time to change the name of the firm to reflect the direction of our new heading.

Utah Ventures I, our first fund, performed well, especially with medical device technologies. The young fund expanded with additional partners who had expertise in information technology and began to focus beyond the region and in other technology areas. The firm shortened its name to UV Partners.

In 2002, the firm changed dramatically as it brought on board the two partners from the successful venture team at Novell. This change signaled an important transformation in the range of the firms’ investments, with both its' geographical reach and its' technology areas expanding. The team that came over from Novell had tremendous technical and operating experience to add to the existing expertise already at UV Partners, and the combination led to one of the most successful funds in the industry in UV III. Two retirements, a handful of other changes in careers, and three more hires of talented investors from other technical, academic, professional, and operating backgrounds have rounded out the UV Partners Fund IV team.

With the six investing partners taking the fund in exciting new directions, we wanted a name that reflected our passion, our success, and our extended reach.

The current investing team has had decades of experience mentoring entrepreneurs, working side by side with some of the most innovative companies in the industry, while achieving industry-leading returns for our limited partners. Our technology and market experience has given us the ability to understand complex technologies and recognize the potential of emerging companies and new markets.

Our new name, Pelion Venture Partners, is a reflection of the companies, technologies, markets, and entrepreneurs we support, all built on a strong foundation and poised for success. Our companies operate in an environment similar to that encountered by Jason and the Argonauts, whose story is familiar as the mythological quest for the Golden Fleece. Those explorers set sail in the Argo, a ship built from trees cut from the slopes of Mt. Pelion in Greece. Only the best timber, the strongest, the most resilient, the most flexible, would be suitable for the ship that was to make that epic voyage. There would be trials along the way, but both the ship and the crew proved to be up to the arduous requirements for success—the ship was well-built, and the crew was resourceful, clever, and persistent.

At Pelion Venture Partners, we seek great minds, resourceful innovators, and resilient entrepreneurs, and we add to that our own expertise, forged from our individual experience as executives, managers, technologists, lawyers, and financial experts. Together with our entrepreneurs, we believe this experience is the touchstone of success, so we have made it the foundation of our firm. We look constantly to discover innovative opportunities with visionary entrepreneurs who have a strong desire to succeed and the discipline to execute, and we help them launch their great ideas and achieve exciting new journeys in the marketplace.

The perfect symbol for our role in that process, for what Pelion Venture Partners has become, is the timber from Mt. Pelion. We will help you build your ship with those timbers. We will add our expertise and experience to your entrepreneurial drive and help you execute toward the achievement of your own success.

The name Pelion is one part constellation--reaching for the stars—and it’s one part the mountain from which the timbers for the Argo came; a mountain whose own height will help you seek your greater heights. The rich symbolism of Mt. Pelion conveys the essence of our fund: we help you build strong opportunities with discipline, hard work, and the insight that comes from experience, to make your company strong, reliable, enduring, and successful.

Since 1986, Pelion Venture Partners has been helping entrepreneurs turn early-stage concepts into tomorrow’s industry-leading companies. The Pelion team has deep and diverse industry and investment experience. We are hands-on in our approach and work collaboratively on each portfolio company over the life of an investment. Our company partners benefit from our insights and our abilities to focus strategically and tactically on success. We can tap into and leverage a vast network of technology executives in all corners of the IT and medical device industries to help our companies achieve success.

In order to maximize our contribution to each management team, we support and concentrate on market segments where our knowledge, experience, and contacts are deepest. Our areas of expertise include information technology, digital media, software and infrastructure, communications, medical devices, nanotechnology, networking, wireless, and internet-based companies and technologies. In all markets, we value businesses with a significant proprietary position and teams with unique skills and knowledge. We help build companies that will become market leaders. We invest in people with a passion for success who have developed a track record of accomplishment.

We surround ourselves with thinkers committed to our goals: strong performance, industry dominance, and extraordinary returns. We admire people who are on the forefront of thought leadership in their fields; we prefer the company of those who innovate.

Integrity, trust, and teamwork are core values at Pelion Venture Partners. These are not just hollow philosophies for us, but the foundation of our investment success and enduring partnerships with entrepreneurs. We love diversity in our management teams and welcome open, direct, and honest dialogue about how to grow and succeed. We recognize and appreciate creativity and realize it takes different forms among the individuals on our team. We enjoy the challenge of leading an effort into uncharted territory and expect one another to take responsibility for the successes and disappointments that result. We understand that living these values is the key to our success as a partnership.

Our previous experiences have taught us that shared values and philosophical alignments are key predictors of enjoyable relationships and rewarding work. We look for evidence of shared values in our entrepreneurs and management teams and encourage them to do the same when evaluating venture capital firms.

We understand that in today's environment the speed and quality of decisions is vital to both entrepreneurs and investors. We strive to give quick and honest feedback to the entrepreneurs who approach us with a business idea. Once we have received a business plan from a company, we use the following process in deciding whether to invest :

• One of our partners will review the plan to determine if the opportunity is consistent with the current investment goals and criteria of Pelion Venture Partners. If the answer is yes, the idea will be presented to the entire partnership.
• Throughout this process we evaluate the potential of a company, its' management team, and its' progress against world-class standards.
• We will analyze the company, meet with the executive team, and conduct an on-site operational review. This stage typically involves several members of the Pelion team, who will perform due diligence and test our initial findings. At the conclusion of the review, the lead partner will decide whether to recommend the investment to the rest of the team.
• We then require that the company make a presentation to the entire Pelion team.

Pelion Venture Partners has spent years placing itself in a position to create investment success by accessing the best ideas, the best thinkers and managers, and the best opportunities. As a result, the Pelion team is well known and respected by entrepreneurs, other venture capitalists, investment bankers, corporate managers, technology experts, industry consultants, academicians, attorneys, and accountants.

Key components of our approach include:

• Leading the first institutional investment into a company and working to bring in other institutional investors as part of an investing syndicate.
• Building success together, sleeves rolled up, side by side with entrepreneurs.
• Fostering relationships built on mutual trust and a long-term view.
• Expecting creativity, vision, and a commitment to excellence from management. We promise integrity, fairness, and patience in return.
• Balancing expectations with empathy; demanding maximum effort from our company partners, yet appreciating the challenges of development stage activities.
• Becoming an asset to be exploited, rather than a boss to be satisfied. We strive to make our skills, experience, and contacts useful.
• Being around for disappointments, as well as triumphs; to applaud accomplishments and to understand frustrations.

In short, Pelion Venture Partner's expertise and track record, along with our collaboration and work ethic, create a solid platform from which to launch dynamic and ground-breaking companies with innovative entrepreneurs.