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A ComVentures cofounder, Roland Van der Meer invests in technologies and early stage communications companies with the potential to redefine business and economic models, as well as the way in which whole segments of the communications industry operate. Listed 18th on the Forbes Midas List of top 100 technology dealmakers, he focuses his investments on systems, components and services.Roland's recent investments and board seats include Ambric, Cloudshield, Fabrik, FilmLoop, FyreStorm, OpSource, PacketHop, Quantia and Sensys.
Roland was one of 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, 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) and Ascendent Systems (acquired by RIM).
He has more than 20 years of experience in the communications industry as an engineer, strategist and investor. Before helping to cofound ComVentures, Roland served as a partner with Partech International, co-founded Communications Ventures, and spent several years with Hambrecht & Quist Venture Partners. Early in his career, he held engineering positions with GTE Labs and Sprint. | 