It is an overstatement to call the $67bn merger of data storage company EMC into computer maker Dell an acquihire, but one result was that Scott Darling emerged as president of Dell Technologies Capital.
Since September when the merger officially closed, Darling has led Dell Technologies Capital, the corporate development and venture unit of Dell Technologies, a family of businesses with $75bn of revenue consisting of Dell, Dell EMC, Pivotal Software, RSA, SecureWorks, Virtustream and VMware.
Jim Lussier, managing director and head of corporate venturing unit Dell Ventures, had left to run his own advisory and venture capital firm, Coast Ridge Group, just ahead of computer maker Dell’s merger with EMC.
Under Lussier, Dell Ventures managed the $300m Strategic Innovation Venture Fund, investing in areas including storage, data centre technology, cloud computing, big data and analytics, security, mobile and the internet of things. Deals included Cylance, Docusign, Exablox, Invincea, Lastline, Mirantis, Nexenta and Nutanix. In February, Sophos agreed to acquire Invincea, an anti-malware software developer that had raised about $39m, for $100m in cash plus a $20m earnout.
Under Darling, Dell Technologies Capital is likely to increase the pace with “$100m per year investment in venture capital” and an expected $2bn in mergers and acquisitions of some venture-backed companies in its “aggressive” pursuit of technology.
Darling was president of EMC corporate development and ventures from March 2012, having joined the company after a five-year stint at venture capital firm Frazier Technology Ventures.
His successes at EMV Ventures included ServiceNow’s BrightPoint (originally Vorstack) acquisition and shaping the Pivotal creation. Parent company EMC converted $400m of debt to equity as part of the Ford, General Electric and Microsoft-backed $653m series C round closed by Pivotal in May.
But his corporate venturing and technology roots stretch back further, having originally joined chip maker Intel, which primarily powered Dell’s personal computers, in 1990. Darling switched from marketing to Intel Capital in 2000 before leaving for Frazier in 2007.