"The team from MVM helped me transform Academy123 from a nascent technology to a well-funded, significant business in 9 months."
Momentum Venture Management is led by seasoned executives with impressive track records in early stage businesses and repeated success in securing significant capital from leading venture funds. The company was founded in 2004 by Matt Ridenour and Andy Wilson.
Matt Ridenour - Managing Director
Prior to founding Momentum Venture Management, Matt spent more than 10 years working in private equity, venture capital and as a CEO in successful early-stage companies. He has been a principal in more than 25 private market transactions with an aggregate value of more than $200 million. Prior to founding Momentum Venture Management, Matt served as CEO of UNX, the world's largest independent institutional equity trading platform, where he secured $20 million in venture funding. He also founded Gazelle TechVentures, a $60 million VC firm where he continues to serve on the executive committee. Previously he was a principal in Blue Capital, a private equity firm spun out of McKinsey & Company, and also spent two years focusing on private equity advisory at Bain & Company. Matt holds a BA in Economics from Dartmouth College and graduated with High Honors as a Baker Scholar (top 5% in his MBA class) from Harvard Business School.
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Andy Wilson - Managing Director/Founder
Andy has a strong track record as a senior executive in early stage companies and brings particular expertise in product development and operations. Prior to founding Momentum Venture Management, he served as Senior Vice President of Global Product Management & General Manager of New Ventures at Overture Services, a Pasadena-based advertising services and marketing company that was acquired by Yahoo! for $1.7 billion. Previously he was President & COO of RiverOne, a high-tech supply chain ASP, where he raised more than $50 million of VC investment, built the management team and grew the organization to more than 150 employees. He spent three years at Bowne & Company (DESI), where he led the Western U.S. region from start-up to $50 million in sales/600 people and was promoted to Senior Vice President Strategic Operations and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the entire multi-hundred million dollar business unit. Andy holds an engineering degree with honors from Dartmouth College and received his MBA with a concentration in operations and technology management from Harvard Business School.
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Stuart MacFarlane - Managing Director
Stuart brings more than 10 years of consumer internet and new media experience to Momentum Venture Management, with a strong track record of launching popular online destinations. He joined Momentum in 2007 after serving as CEO of Insider Pages, a search engine backed by Sequoia Capital, Softbank Capital and Idealab. Stuart quickly built Insider Pages into a leading user generated content site before it was sold to Citysearch in 2007. Previously he was VP of New Ventures at Idealab, where he advised portfolio companies in business development, fundraising and new product development. Prior to joining Idealab, Stuart was Managing Director of Digital Media Services at Loudeye Technologies, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at MXG Media, and was also a consultant at Bain & Company. He started his career working for SmithKline Beecham for five years. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor's Degree from Cornell University.
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Jonathan Niednagel – Venture Partner
Jonathan joined Momentum Venture Management after serving as President of Xytech Systems, a media and entertainment-focused ERP software company. Prior to this Jonathan was the CEO of Local.com, a Clearstone/ICP-backed location-based search engine within the idealab portfolio of companies.
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Scott Shapiro - Associate
Since joining Momentum Venture Management in 2006, Scott has been involved in the execution and management of several of MVM’s portfolio companies. He has also evaluated a variety of early-stage technology opportunities.
Prior to joining MVM, Scott was an Associate in the Finance Practice of CRA International (Charles River Associates), where he provided research and analysis in matters involving business valuation, complex derivatives and investment analysis, breach of contract, securities litigation, and intellectual property valuation. While at CRA he built valuation models, regression models, calculated damages for multi-billion dollar lawsuits, and developed algorithms to analyze billions of trades.
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Ryan Nurnberger - Associate
Ryan Nurnberger is an Associate with Momentum Venture Management where he is involved in the execution and management of MVM portfolio companies as well as the evaluation of early-stage technology opportunities.
Prior to joining Momentum, Ryan was in the media and entertainment Investment Banking group at Montgomery & Co. While there, Ryan was responsible for providing merger and acquisition advisory, corporate finance, and capital raising services to growth companies in the Internet and Digital Media industries. Notable transactions include the sale of Lexico Publishing group to InterActive Corp, Thomson’s acquisition of SyncCast and various Private Placement transactions for leading growth companies.
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Katie Cameron - Administrative Manager
Katie joined Momentum Venture Management as an administrative manager with extensive experience working with start-up ventures. In 1998 she opened a boutique intellectual property law firm with three attorneys in Indianapolis. After turning a profit in the first year in business, she successfully aided in its merger with the second largest law firm in Indianapolis. Katie then became the first employee for Gazelle TechVentures, a new venture capital firm based in Indianapolis. In 2000, she joined UNX, Inc, an agency brokerage firm in Burbank, California, where she served in various roles in administration, marketing, patent & trademark law, electronic trading and compliance. Katie majored in psychology and minored in business at Purdue University.