Clearstone Venture Partners

Clearstone Venture Partners is an early stage venture capital firm focused on IT investing with offices in Santa Monica, CA, Palo Alto, CA, and Mumbai, India. Founded in 1997, as Idealab Capital Partners, Clearstone was responsible for the early-stage funding of many successful startups including PayPal (IPO, acquired by eBay), Overture.com (IPO, acquired by Yahoo), Internet Brands/CarsDirect (NASDAQ: INET), NetZero/United Online (NASDAQ: UNTD), MP3.com (IPO, acquired by Vivendi), Meru Networks (NASDAQ: MERU), Integrien (acquired by VMware), Ankeena (acquired by Juniper), Kazeon Systems (Acquired by EMC) and Mimosa Systems (acquired by Iron Mountain). Around 2013, Clearstone began to wind down operations, although it continued to invest additional capitol in companies already in its portfolio.

Managing Directors

 * Bill Elkus, Founder
 * Jim Armstrong
 * William Quigley
 * Sumant Mandal
 * Erik Lassila