Voyager Capital selects IVP’s James Newell as new partner

Voyager Capital today announced the hiring of a new partner, bringing on board former Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) executive James Newell. In this role, he’ll be tasked with making investments in Seattle-based startups and those focusing on artificial intelligence, security, and software-as-a-service (SaaS).

A long-time employee with IVP, Newell has spent seven years in various roles working on deal flow and execution and assisting the firm’s various portfolio companies. In his most recent stint, he served as vice president working on investments in companies like Kayak, Carbonite, LegalZoom, SoFi, Checkr, and others. While the opportunity at Voyager Capital may be viewed as a step up, it’s also giving Newell an excuse to return to the place where he grew up: Seattle.

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Voyager Capital has been around since 1997 and focuses on startups in the Pacific Northwest and California. It currently has $420 million under management and invests in enterprise software, infrastructure, and big data applications. “Voyager fundamentally believes that early stage companies in the Northwest are best served by a local venture firm as their first institutional partner,” Newell said in an interview with VentureBeat. “How would a Bay Area [venture capitalist] know the best tech executives in Seattle or Portland? How can they help you navigate the inner workings of a complex organization such as Amazon?”

Newell believes his investor experience and board experience gleaned from his time at IVP will beneficially impact Voyager’s portfolio companies. In addition, his time working with later stage startups “should help our pattern matching at the early stage as we look for companies that can build tremendous scale.” He added, “given that I’m originally from Seattle, but spent more than a decade in the Valley, I can bring a complementary network to the firm while fitting nicely into the Northwest ecosystem.”

He describes the current ecosystem in the Pacific Northwest as blossoming, largely propelled by the likes of Microsoft and Amazon. Seattle has become “quite literally the center of the cloud universe,” thanks to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, while also being home to large public companies such as Expedia, Zillow, Tableau, and F5.

“While the Bay Area has traditionally been known as the center of the technology ecosystem, it is obvious that great companies can be built outside of Silicon Valley. Seattle is one of those markets,” said Newell. “The Voyager team has created a tremendous practice, and I’m excited to help them accelerate success in this market.”

Updated as of 11:00 a.m. Pacific on Wednesday: Clarified that Newell was hired as a partner, not a venture partner.