Silicon Valley investor plans to move south.
Erik Rannala is leaving Harrison Metal Capital, the Silicon Valley “micro-VC” shop that has backed such companies as AdMob (acquired by Google), Heroku (acquired by SalesForce.com) and ModCloth. Fortune has learned that he plans to raise a separate fund focused on opportunities in Southern California.
Harrison Metal’s other co-founder, Michael Dearing, is expected to continue running the firm (which most people seem to believe he was already doing). Both Rannala and Dearing are former executives with eBay (EBAY), Rannala ran the premium features business and Dearing was a senior VP and general merchandise manager.
Neither Rannala nor Dearing returned requests for comment. Here is Rannala’s full bio, from the Harrison Metal website:
Before joining Harrison Metal, Erik was most recently vice president of product management and strategy at TripAdvisor, the largest travel community site on the Web. In that role, he led product strategy and development for TripAdvisor sites in the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, as well distributed applications and syndicated content on partner sites like Facebook.
Prior to TripAdvisor, Erik spent over four years at eBay, where he held a variety of positions, including leadership of eBay’s premium features business, which grew during his tenure from $124 million in revenue in 2002 to $410 million in 2005, significantly outpacing overall eBay revenue and listings growth.
Previously, Erik held leadership roles at MVP.com, where he was the online sporting goods retailer’s first marketing employee, and at Accenture, where he advised Fortune 500 retail, communications, and consumer products clients on strategy, operations and technology engagements. He was also an early member of Accenture’s first practice group dedicated to Internet strategy and development in the mid-1990’s.
Erik earlier served at the Domestic Policy Council in the White House, where he worked on issues such as equal employment opportunity and Native American affairs.
Erik holds a BS from the University of Delaware and an MBA from Duke University.
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