Back in 2006, a number of ex-Googlers became full-time investors, including angels Aydin Senkut, Georges Harik and Paul Buchheit (founder of FriendFeed).
It would be overstating things to say that the tide has now turned, but at least one former VC, Karim Faris, has joined Google to focus on investments and acquisitions.
Faris spent the last year and a half working independently to help startups build their teams and raise financing, but for four years before that was a principal at Atlas Ventures in Boston, where he sat on the boards of Atlas-backed Lilliputian Systems, a Wilmington, Mass., a portable fuel cell technology startup, and CLK Design Automation in Littleton, Mass., which makes timing and power analysis tools used in microprocessor design (and that continues to list Faris as a board member, and an Atlas investor, at its website).
Before joining Atlas Venture in 2002, Faris also worked as the director new ventures at Level 3 Communications, held carious engineering and marketing positions at Intel Corp., and had short stints at both Generation Partners and Morgan Stanley.
In a note to friends today, Faris said that at Google, he’s now focusing on funding startups — and acquiring them — “across the media/Internet landscape, where Google remains active in spite of these choppy markets.”
