Try managing a portfolio of startups in the high-tech sector today -- including one or two in the telecom equipment market -- and you might not feel that inclined to bound out of bed, galvanized by the day's possibilities, on any kind of regular basis.
That is, unless you happen to be Chris Baldwin, who has just won a promotion to general partner at Charles River Ventures (CRV), an early-stage VC firm with an emphasis on storage networking, optical technologies, and next-generation computing (see Baldwin Makes General Partner at CRV).
"I still love it," he says.
Baldwin (who's not insane!) has been at CRV for three years and currently serves as a director on the boards of Acopia Networks Inc., EqualLogic Inc., Mariko Systems, Nauticus Networks Inc., Picolight Inc., Pirus Networks, and Storigen Systems Inc. (See EqualLogic Takes Flight, Acopia Founder Quits, Nauticus Closes $21M Round, Nauticus Nabs $5M, Pirus Takes Channel Challenge, Pirus Ships Switch, and Storigen Ships Cache of Many Colors.)
Baldwin had considerable success in the data communications industry before joining CRV. He was VP of marketing for Argon Networks, which was acquired by Siemens AG (NYSE: SI; Frankfurt: SIE) in 1999 for $250 million. Before Argon, he spent three years at Cascade Communications as director of marketing, which was sold to Ascend for $3.7 billion. And Ascend was later sold to Lucent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: LU) for a whopping $20 billion. Not bad going.
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