Claremont Creek Ventures

Claremont Creek Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early stage information technology companies. Our investment professionals are experienced managers and proven venture investors. Our team shares a deep commitment to helping entrepreneurs build successful companies from the ground up. We focus on IT sectors where we have deep domain expertise, including – but not limited to – energy efficiency, IT healthcare, sensor based systems and security markets.

Claremont Creek Ventures is based in the East Bay. It is the premier funding source for early stage technology opportunities in the local area. We strive to reach a wider population of entrepreneurs – from Silicon Valley to the East Bay Area and beyond. Our East Bay location allows us to work closely alongside a strong entrepreneurial community and excellent research-driven "incubating institutions", such as UC Berkeley, UC Davis and the Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley Laboratories.

Managing Director

Nat is the resident expert on energy conservation and management systems.  He also has broad interest in areas such as mobile payments and social networking. His focus in these investment areas is built on twenty years of experience in IT as: CEO of Cybergold, founder of Centram Systems West, founding CEO of Kaleida Labs and Vice President of Sun Microsystems. Prior to his business career, Nat served as Special Assistant to Pennsylvania’s Lt. Governor, William Scranton, III. He ran the state’s Energy Agency as its Interim Director. Some past investments include: Ask Jeeves, Shiva and Macromedia.

Nat holds a Master’s degree in Education and is an emeritus member of the Executive Board of the College of Letters and Science at UC Berkeley. He serves on the Advisory Board for the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, as a member of the US Secret Service Electronics Crime Taskforce and is a Board Member of the Federation of American Scientists.

Nat lives in Berkeley, California with his wife of 31 years, Marilyn. Their three boys are in college.

Randy Hawks

Managing Director

Randy is a Managing Director at Claremont Creek Ventures, bringing more than 25 years of technology industry experience as a senior general manager and venture investor to the group. Randy invests in Information Technology and has a special interest in Sensor Networks and Security. In the years prior to co-founding Claremont Creek Ventures, Randy was a General Partner at Novus Ventures and a Venture Partner at Horizon Ventures. Before his venture capital career, Randy had startup experience as CEO at Captiva Software and as COO at Identix (from its founding through IPO and life on NASDAQ). He served as Senior Vice President at AT&T Paradyne and as a Vice President of Marketing and Division General Manager at ITT Information Systems (Qume). Early in his career, Randy served in a variety of roles in the minicomputer business at Texas Instruments and began work as a computer research engineer at Cornell Aeronautical Lab.

Prior investments include Inapac, Invivodata, Identix, Flytecomm, View Central and Be Here.

Randy holds a BSEE from University of Arkansas and has completed the Stanford University Executive Management Program. He serves as a Committee Chair for Keiretsu Forum and is a member of the US Secret Service Electronics Crime Taskforce.

Randy and his wife Bev live in Oakland, California. Their three children are grown.

Managing Director

John has spent the last 20 years managing, building and investing in technology and life science companies. John focuses on the intersection of the information technology and life sciences markets including bioinformatics, molecular diagnostics, genomics, proteomics, software and instrumentation for med-tech industries.

John serves on the board of directors of Arcxis, Tibion, Fluxion, Gene Security Network and Wired Benefits. He is an Industry Fellow at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology at the College of Engineering as well as a member of the Advisory Council to the Lester Center's Berkeley Entrepreneurs' Forum at UC Berkeley.

Early in his career, he joined Alafi Capital, an Emeryville-based venture firm specializing in early-stage biomedical companies, where he served as an officer of the General Partner. At Alafi, John lead investments in more than a dozen successful start-ups, and served as the senior executive and board member of various firms such as Tanox, Software Ventures, Lipomatrix and Megan Health.

In the mid-90s, together with colleague Nat Goldhaber, John helped start Cybergold, an Internet marketing and payments company, serving as the early COO and CFO through its IPO, merger with Mypoints and sale to United Airlines. John continued with the Mypoints unit of United serving as the Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships.