I'm thrilled to welcome Harsh Patel as a Partner at Claremont Creek Ventures. We believe people and relationships form the core elements of any successful entrepreneurial venture. We typically get involved early in a company's development, when a product is nascent and a market may barely exist. That is why the people starting a company are the primary factor in most of our investment decisions. Most successes we've enjoyed have involved entrepreneurs able to attract incredibly talented employees, who established strong relationships with early customer champions, and could navigate key partnership dynamics.
One of the distinguishing characteristics about Harsh is that he excels in the same type of early-stage, relationship-oriented investing that we value. Harsh brings perspective from all angles of the entrepreneurial life-cycle – he's been CTO of a startup he founded and sold, an angel investor, and has made some really terrific early investments as a VC in prior funds. We've known Harsh for years, and it is remarkable how closely our paths aligned over the past decade. Harsh has focused his career on applying complex data analytics to solve problems in enormous, essential industries like healthcare, energy and financial services. We get excited about similar types of opportunities and are committed to pursuing digital innovation in these industries which often don't receive as much VC attention.
This past year was incredibly busy at CCV – we made eight new investments, enjoyed working with several portfolio companies that achieved breakthrough years with substantial commercial scale, and celebrated a terrific outcome for the team at EcoATM. And we're convinced that we're just scratching the surface of opportunity for digital innovation in these areas. Its a pleasure having Harsh as part of our team as we seek to support the next set of entrepreneurs in their journey.
For more information on Harsh and the appointment, please see the release.