Roland Van der Meer
Partner
Roland has more than 25 years of experience in the communications industry as an engineer, strategist and investor in the communications, media, technology and infrastructure sectors. He is a founding partner of Velocity Interactive Group and was a General Partner with ComVentures, the firm he originally co-founded in 1987. Over the course of his career, Roland has invested in and helped manage more than 50 companies. He was among the first to spot the digital transmission revolution and funded PairGain. He followed this up by being the only venture investor in Broadcom (Nasdaq: BRCM), the broadband communications semiconductor company that led the frontier of digital signal processing. Roland was also the initial investor in Arbinet (Nasdaq: ARBX), which created and operates the world's largest market exchange for telecommunications carriers, and Zantaz (acquired by Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU. or AU.L), the leader in email/file archiving and retrieval. A number of Roland's pioneering companies have been acquired by major communications industry players, including: Chromatis Networks (acquired by Lucent), Confertech (acquired by Frontier), dynamicsoft (acquired by Cisco), Monterey Networks (acquired by Cisco), PairGain (acquired by ADC), SiteSmith (acquired by Metromedia Fiber Network), and Ascendent Systems (acquired by RIM).
Previously, Roland spent several years with Hambrecht & Quist Venture Partners. Early in his career, he held engineering positions with GTE Labs and Sprint.
He holds a BSE from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS from the Wharton School.
Recent investments and board seats include: Cloudshield, Mixercast, OpSource, Quantia and Vixxi.
