Menlo Ventures adds a new Venture Partner and EIR to its team to focus more on the enterprise space

Menlo Ventures has expanded its team and is looking more into the enterprise space. The venture capital firm announced on Tuesday that it has named Aeroscout chairman Avery More as its newest venture partner and also brought on board former Informatica executive Alex Gorelik as its Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR).

The addition of More to Menlo Ventures’ ranks is an interesting one because Aeroscout was once one of its portfolio companies — it was acquired by Stanley Healthcare Solutions back in 2012. More is also involved in several other large scale businesses, including Vidyo (also affiliated with Menlo Ventures), QualiSystems, BuzzStream, and SolarEdge Technologies. His responsibilities will be to source deals within the enterprise space.

Gorelik is a serial entrepreneur and has worked in two well-known enterprise companies, IBM and Informatica, where he joins the firm from. He has experience dealing with acquisitions too, as both of his startups were acquired: Exeros by IBM and Acta Technology by Business Objects. Menlo Ventures says that Gorelik will be focusing on developing a company while at the firm and be an advisor to help better understand the Cloud and Big Data sectors.

Menlo Ventures tells us that right now, it’s 50/50 split on its focus between the consumer and enterprise space. It has had success with the latter area and those companies include data storage company 3Par, security service Ironport and Q1 Labs, networking platform F5 Networks, chip manufacturer Cavium Networks, and switches Acme Packet.

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Earlier this year, Managing Director Mark Siegel penned a post that spoke about the value of the enterprise space:

While some of the most successful consumer Internet companies are capturing the headlines today, more than 70% of venture exits in the last two years valued at over $500 million have been in the enterprise sector. These exits have also outperformed their consumer brethren post-IPO. Of the top 10 largest IPOs in the last 2 years, all the enterprise companies in that bracket are trading above their offering prices.

Two areas that Seigel highlighted in his post involve cloud computing and big data, which is where More and Gorelik will be focusing their efforts.

Both of these new hires come following the addition of PlaySpan founder Karl Mehta to Menlo Ventures as a venture partner. His role will be dedicated towards advising on the financial services, mobile payments, e-commerce, and gaming startups. That follows another update to the team where then-Managing Director Shervin Pishevar switched roles to become a venture adviser.

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