The Physicist Turned Venture Capitalist
Rajiv Vyas
Heiner Sussner left a big fish,H & Q; Asia Pacific, a private equity fund with $1.8 billion under management,to join upstart Miramar Venture Partners.
“I was attracted by the opportunity of the fund itself,” Sussner said.
Sussner said that he always has been interested in investing in and building technology companies, something that he found it difficult to do at H & Q.;
“If you have a large fund then you automatically get larger and larger deals,” he said.
Most of the investments that Sussner made at H & Q; were in companies that were based in Asia. During the the four years he was there, the fund had averaged an annual internal rate of return of more than 30%, he said.
Prior to H & Q;, Sussner worked for IBM Corp. for some 16 years.
“The largest part of my IBM career had to do with managing technology programs,” he said.
Sussner joined Big Blue in 1980 and ended up managing larger and larger groups. In 1985, he got involved in advanced programs in storage.
“All of the advanced technical programs at IBM Research in storage were done under my direction,” Sussner said.
Sussner received the 1994 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers medal for engineering excellence for reaching 1-gigabit-per-square-inch storage density.
From 1980 to 1992, Sussner said he worked at IBM Research in San Jose where he had 200 engineers and scientists under him.
In 1993, Sussner started the venture group at IBM in Western Europe.
“Our challenge there was to find investments that normal IBM business would miss,” he said. “We got IBM involved with virtual reality.”
Sussner, who is from Germany, got his doctorate degree in physics from the Centre Nationale de Recherche Scientifique in Grenoble, France, in 1976. He did his post doctorate work in San Jose for IBM. He then returned to Germany and worked at a research laboratory.
“I am basically a physicist who comes out of Europe and who has, since 1980, worked in technology in this country,” he said.
Sussner left IBM in 1996 and joined Phase Metrics Inc., a venture-backed company in San Diego.
,Rajiv Vyas
