Bruce Hallett – Managing Director

Bruce is a co-founder of Miramar and brings his enthusiasm for innovation, product strategy and team building to Miramar’s portfolio companies.  With over two decades of collaborations with technology entrepreneurs, Bruce leads Miramar investments in internet infrastructure and software.  Currently, he serves on the boards of the following Miramar portfolio companies: Brand Affinity Technologies, HyperQuality, OptionEase and RealPractice.  He also served on the boards of Aktino (acquired by Positron) and Berkana Wireless (acquired by Qualcomm).

Prior to founding Miramar, Bruce was Managing Partner of  the Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison Orange County office, where he orchestrated initial public offerings, venture financings and liquidity events for many high profile technology companies in Southern California, including Broadcom, Buy.com, Exult and Applied Semantics (acquired by Google in 2003).

Bruce was one of seven partners on Brobeck’s firmwide executive committee until he started Miramar in 2001.  He was also one of three partners responsible for investing and managing the firm's venture capital funds.  In 1999, Bruce was selected by the California State Bar as one of the 100 most influential attorneys in California.

Bruce received his B.A. magna cum laude from UC Irvine and his J.D. from UCLA. From 2007-2010 he was Chair of the Chief Executive Roundtable at UC Irvine, a group of business leaders committed to building mutually beneficial, strategic partnerships between the university and the community. Bruce also serves on the Board of Directors of OCTANe, LAVA, and the School of Biological Sciences Dean's Leadership Council at UCI.  Starting July 1, 2010, Bruce joins the Board of Regents of the University of California as the UC alumni regent.

Bob Holmen – Managing Director

Bob is a co-founder of Miramar Venture Partners.  Bob has spent his career building technology companies in diverse roles, from hardware and software engineering, to senior management, to venture investor.  Bob leads Miramar investments in advanced technology projects focused on his Southern California roots.  Currently, Bob serves on the Boards of the following Miramar portfolio companies:  FastSoft, Matrix Sensors, Predixion and SolarFlare Communications (observer).  He also served on the Board of SiliconSystems until it was acquired by Western Digital in March 2009.

Bob began his career as a hardware and software engineer at Hughes Aircraft, designing application software for defense-related projects.  He moved on to serve as senior management in a series of technology companies highlighted by his roles as Vice President & General Counsel of First Consulting Group (acquired by CSC) and Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and General Counsel of CoCensys (acquired by Purdue Pharmaceuticals).

Bob received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1985, serving as an officer of the national engineering honor society at Stanford.  He received his J.D. from UC Berkeley in 1989.  Bob serves on the Board of Directors of the San Diego Venture Group, and is an Adjunct Professor at USC's Marshall School of Business, teaching Investing in New Ventures.

Heiner Sussner – Managing Director

Heiner focuses on storage and cloud related investments for Miramar.  He serves on the Board of Directors of Miramar portfolio companies AccelOps, Fastsoft, IMT, Jeda Networks and Matrix Sensors, and previously served on the Boards of Azuro (acquired by Cadence), Protego Networks (acquired by Cisco) and SiliconSystems (acquired by Western Digital).

Prior to joining Miramar, he was a Senior Managing Director of H&Q Asia Pacific, where he was responsible for technology investments in Asia and Silicon Valley and served on the boards of several technology start-ups including Headway Technology (acquired by TDK in 2000).

Heiner started his professional career at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart and joined IBM Research in San Jose, California in 1980 working on advanced recording technology.  In 1986, he became Director of Storage Systems and Technology for IBM Research and in 1992 joined IBM Europe in Paris where he became co-founder and Director of IBM Europe's corporate venture group.  In 1996, Heiner joined Phase Metrics Corporation, a venture-backed data storage company based in San Diego, California, as Chief Technical Officer responsible for R&D and product development.

Heiner is a graduate of the Technical University of Munich and received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1976 for his work at the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique in Grenoble, France and the University of Konstanz, Germany.  He is author of numerous scientific publications, holds several patents and was awarded the 1994 IEEE Medal for Engineering Excellence.

Rick Fink - Managing Director (Miramar I)

Rick co-founded  Miramar Venture Partners in 2001. Prior to founding Miramar, Rick was a partner with the national law firm of Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison where he spent 20 years working with and advising companies on a wide range of operating, strategic, financing and legal matters. He has extensive transactional experience with emerging companies, including mergers and acquisitions, private and public financings, licensing, and corporate partnering arrangements. In addition to Miramar, Rick has represented numerous venture capital funds in structuring, negotiating and executing their financings of emerging companies. In addition to his practice, Rick founded and managed Brobeck’s Orange County, CA office, managed the firm’s 250-attorney Business and Technology practice group nationwide, and chaired the firm’s first-ever Investment Committee, which was responsible for investing and managing the firm's venture funds.

Rick received his undergraduate degree from Indiana University in 1977, where he graduated with honors and received awards for outstanding achievement in scholarship and athletics. He received his J.D. from Northwestern University in 1980.

In addition to his role in Miramar’s first fund, and separate from Miramar, Rick serves as Managing Director and CEO of Fortis Advisors, a M&A shareholder representative services company. At Miramar, Rick served on the Board of Directors of Coradiant (acquired by BMC Software in April 2011) and Tarari (acquired by LSI Corporation in 2007).

Sherman Atkinson

Sherman joined Miramar in 2011 and focuses on early stage, Digital Media investing, with a particular emphasis on social media, online advertising and new forms of e-commerce.  Previously, Sherman was with Austin Ventures, where he was a CEO-In-Residence in their Growth Equity Practice.

Prior to Austin Ventures, Sherman spent 17 years as an operator and an entrepreneur in the new media and e-commerce sectors.  He served as the Chief Operating Officer of Intermix Media, Inc. (AMEX: MIX), - incubator of MySpace.com.  As part of the turn-around team, Sherman helped develop a number of new Internet media properties and also served as the President of Intermix Network, one of the largest Advertising Networks in 2005.  During his tenure as COO, Intermix was acquired by News Corporation (NYSE: NWS) for $673 million. Prior to joining Intermix, Sherman served as the Chief Operating Officer of Buy.com and President of BuyServices, Inc.

Sherman received his BA in Russian from Purdue University. He also served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps and spent five years as a consultant with Booz Allen & Hamilton.  Sherman currently serves on the board of Pointstreak Sports Technologies, Inc., a Canadian-based, venture-backed company focused on the Online Sports Registration and Statistics space.

Armond Hairapetian - EIR

Armond is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Miramar Venture Partners. Armond brings to Miramar more than 17 years of technical and general management experience and will help the firm form new companies around specific product plans and technologies as well as evaluate markets, technologies and business plans in connection with Miramar’s general investment activity.

Most recently, Armond was the General Manager of the optical products division of Broadcom Corporation, the leading supplier of 10G transceiver ICs for optical communications. Prior to that, Armond was the co-founder and CEO of venture-backed NewPort Communications where he led the engineering effort in developing the world’s first OC-48 and OC-192 transceivers in CMOS, and the ultimate sale of the company to Broadcom in August 2000 for approximately $1.2 billion. Prior to founding NewPort, Armond held various senior level engineering positions at Rockwell Semiconductor, Sierra Semiconductor and Siemens Pacesetter.

Armond received his BS, MS and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA. He also holds a Masters in Financial Engineering from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Armond holds several patents and was awarded UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Distinguished Alumnus of the Year Award in 2008.

Steve Yamamoto - EIR

Steve is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Miramar Venture Partners focused on deal sourcing, new market assessment, and providing strategic and operational support for Miramar portfolio companies.  Steve brings to Miramar over 15 years of senior leadership experience in general management, technology operations, and strategic M&A.

Steve joined Miramar from Qualcomm where he served in several executive positions, most recently as Vice President of Business Development responsible for strategic acquisitions in the areas of Software as a Service and Data Analytics.  Prior to this, Steve served as Vice President of Operations where he was responsible for network operations, supply chain, program management, as well as business units in Europe and LatAm, leading a worldwide organization of over 400 people. 

Steve began his career in various engineering and product management roles at Phase Metrics, a venture-backed data storage company acquired by KLA-Tencor in 2001.  Steve later became the general manager of KLA-Tencor’s surface metrology and data storage divisions where he initiated new programs in adjacent markets such as MEMS and laboratory R&D.

Steve earned his Ph.D. in Physics from UCSD where he was a UC Regents Scholar and General Atomics Fellow.  He also holds an MBA from SDSU.