About Vanguard Ventures: Vanguard Ventures is a venture capital firm specializing in seed and early stage high technology investments, with offices in Palo Alto, California and Houston, Texas. The Managing Directors, Jack Gill, Bob Ulrich, Don Wood, Dan Eilers and Tom McConnell have extensive and successful backgrounds as technologists, operating managers, entrepreneur-founders and venture capital investors. Since 1981, Vanguard has funded 120 startups; more than 30 of these have already become major corporate successes and many others in this Vanguard portfolio are destined for success. In aggregate, these companies created over $70 billion in market value, and returned approximately $1 billion to investors.
Year Founded: 1981
Managing Directors:

Dan Eilers
Jack Gill
Tom McConnell
Bob Ulrich
Don Wood
CFO: Ken Shilling
Portfolio Companies Since 1981: 120
Capital under Management: $350 million
Focus: Communications, Life Sciences,
Information Technology
Stage: Seed or A Round
Investment per Company: Up to $10-12 million
Geographic Preference: United States
Notable "Firsts":

Aldus (merged into Adobe, NASDAQ: ADBE), created the desktop publishing marketplace

Asthmatx, (acquired by Boston Scientific, NYSE: BSX), the first non-drug asthma therapy approved by the FDA

Ciena (NASDAQ: CIEN), pioneered dense wave division multiplexing (DWDM)

Cobalt Networks (NASDAQ: COBT), developed the first Linux web server appliance

Endotherapeutics, (merged into US Surgical Corp./Tyco, NYSE: TYC), the pioneer in creating minimally invasive surgical systems

Network Appliance Corp. (NASDAQ: NTAP), pioneered the network attached storage (NAS) industry

ZipRealty.com (NASDAQ: ZIPR), the first internet-based residential real estate brokerage