Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Google vet Steinberg joins Polaris

By Mass High Tech staff

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Jon Steinberg, former strategic partner development manager for Google’s Small Medium Business Partnerships, has joined Polaris Venture Partners as an Executive in Residence. Steinberg noted the move in his blog Tuesday.

Polaris houses its main office in Waltham, though Steinberg announced he will be working in New York.

In his blog, Steinberg credited Seth Goldstein, CEO of Socialmedia.com, with connecting him to Polaris general partner Mike Hirshland. Steinberg worked for Goldstein at Majestic Research where Steinberg served as director of business development.

Steinberg wrote that his time at Polaris will be spent “employing a mix of hackable business development and hackable investing” — his terms for building on open APIs.

Steinberg graduated from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and earned his MBA from Columbia University.

Founded in 1996, Polaris Venture Partners most recently has seen a couple of its portfolio companies snag additional funding, not necessarily from Polaris, including optical equipment maker Mintera Corp.’s $4 million in financing and medical device startup Seventh Sense Biosystems Inc., which won a Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to apply to a global malaria infection monitoring project.

Polaris also has had its fourth portfolio company in six months close its doors in September. The VC firm’s portfolio shutdowns include Redmond, Wash.-based spine disorder implants maker Archus Orthopedics; Cambridge data warehousing firm Dataupia Inc.; GreenFuel Technologies Inc., an algae bioreactor developer in Cambridge ; and Maynard-based high-performance computer systems maker SiCortex Inc.