Cervin Ventures today announced that Daniel Karp has joined the firm as partner, becoming the fourth partner in the early-stage venture capital firm. Daniel adds to the firm’s entrepreneurial nature and enterprise expertise, bringing hands-on experience in engineering and product development before pursuing roles in venture capital and corporate venture. Karp will be putting his experience to work at Cervin focused on core areas of enterprise infrastructure, including cloud, DevOps, DevTools, security, networking, operations, and observability.
“We have been deliberate in our team growth, seeking colleagues who not only have venture experience, but who know what it is to build something, to both succeed and fail, and to keep going,” said Preetish Nijhawan, co-founder and general partner, Cervin Ventures. “Daniel brings that successful track record in venture, but also brings technical and product knowledge and an entrepreneurial spirit. These traits are invaluable in helping identify opportunities, and in working alongside our partners to help them grow and scale.”
Karp spent that last 8 years in corporate ventures at Cisco, leading global strategic investments and acquisitions with a focus on the multi-billion-dollar domains of cloud, networking, and data centers. He was instrumental in partnering with companies like Gong.io, Habana Labs (acquired by Intel) and GuardiCore (acquired by Akamai), at an early-stage. Prior to jumping into venture, Karp led strategy for the Start-up Business Group at Microsoft, fostering internal Incubation projects, in areas such as natural user interface (NUI), communications and collaboration, robotics, 3D printing and machine learning (ML), and worked in Product Strategy and Business Development in Microsoft’s Azure group. He additionally served as chip design lead at Comsys Communication and Signal Processing Ltd, which was acquired by Intel.
“When looking to move forward in my career, the appeal of Cervin was unmatched, with a collaborative partner team that is made up of entrepreneurs who have been on the founder journey themselves,” said Karp. “This unique purview, and ‘roll up your sleeves’ culture appealed to the builder in me. The deep investment I see the partners have in the founders and the companies we work with, during the most crucial stages of their entrepreneurial journey, is nothing short of inspiring. To me, this is venture at its purest form.”
