Over the past four years, Mark Sherman has made a sizeable contribution to Telstra Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the Australia-based phone operator.
He joined as the unit was being established in 2011 after spending 10 years with Battery Ventures. He focuses on mobile, cloud, media, internet of things and data startups.
One of Sherman’s most high-profile deals was the 2013 $100m investment into virtual data storage firm Box, which was joined by Telefónica, Itochu Technology Ventures, Macnica, DST Global, Coatue, and Mitsui. He also led the $18.3m series D round into app developer Kony, an unspecified sum in series B funding for mobile verification firm Telesign and $18m for cloud carrier Nexmo. He also led a 2014 investment round for real-time analytics startup Matrixx Software and a financing round for e-signature firm DocuSign that brought its total funding to $230m ahead of its forthcoming IPO.
Sherman holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and studied economics at Pennsylvania.