Vinny Smith’s Toba Capital has taken another stake in a Minnesota-based storage networking provider headed by venture partner and former Quest Software executive Walter Angerer.
The Irvine-based venture capitalist firm has invested an additional $1 million in Parsec Labs LLC to accelerate the rollout of the company’s flagship product, which provides virtualization for network-attached storage devices.
The product, slated for release in the next few months, is targeted to companies with about 200 employees and 5 to 10 terabytes of data, Angerer said.
The investments highlight Toba’s strategy of targeting the “next generation of IT infrastructure.”
Smith, who cashed out some $800 million last year when Dell Inc. acquired his Aliso Viejo-based business software maker for $2.4 billion, has grown Toba into OC’s largest venture capital firm in less than a year since starting it last December.
Toba has more than 20 companies and more than $200 million in its investment portfolio, which Smith said he plans to double over time.
“We are funding a deal about every two weeks,” Smith told the Business Journal in a recent email.
Angerer returned to his native Minneapolis this year as Toba extended its operations beyond Orange County and Silicon Valley in an effort to capture regional talent and potential big exits.
“We have a lot of storage talent here in the Twin Cities,” said Angerer, who established Parsec Labs this year. “We wanted to take advantage of the environment and have access to startups in the area.”
Angerer, prior to joining Toba in April as a venture partner, was vice president and general manager of data protection at Quest, where he led several product lines.
Hitachi Sells Stock for $810.1M
Hitachi Ltd. has unloaded about 12.5 million shares of Western Digital Corp. common stock it acquired last year as part of a $4.8 billion deal to sell its San Jose-based drive making unit, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Ltd.
Tokyo-based Hitachi pocketed more than $810.1 million in the secondary public offering and now owns about 12.5 million shares, or about a 5.3% stake in Western Digital, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Hitachi will continue to have two designated directors sit on the board of the Irvine-based drive maker.
The Hitachi Global buy added key corporate customers and an entree into the growing server and storage market, fueling Western Digital’s ascent as the world’s largest drive maker in revenue and unit sales.
Rousing BlizzCon Welcome
Blizzard Entertainment Inc. Chief Executive Michael Morhaime received a rock star welcome as he kicked off the Nov. 8 opening ceremony at BlizzCon. Revelers greeted the longtime gaming executive with boisterous applause and cheers as he walked onto the main stage at the Anaheim Convention Center, which was lit up with rotating and spinning lights.
“I miss you guys,” Morhaime said to the crowd.
The fanfest returned to Anaheim after it was canceled last year for the first time since its inaugural run in 2005. Blizzard instead held the 2012 Battle.net World Championship, a global eSports event, in Shanghai.
