Carlyle adds four to venture team

The Carlyle Group has added four to its West Coast offices, hiring two managing directors from Sevin Rosen and Pequot Capital, and transferring two executives internally.

The Carlyle Group has expanded its West Coast venture and growth capital team with the hire of two new managing directors, Nick Sturiale and Greg Rossmann. Sturiale was previously a managing director at Sevin Rosen Funds and Rossman was previously a managing director at Pequot Capital.

Sturiale joined Sevin Rosen in 2000, and worked closely with portfolio companies YouSendIt, a web-based file transfer service, and Sonopia, a service that allows users to create independent mobile phone carriers. Sturiale was also involved with the seed round of investing for open source company XenSource, which was sold to software company Citrix in 2007 for $500 million.

As first reported by PEO last November, the California partners of Sevin Rosen’s venture arm decided to split with the firm to pursue different investment practices, ahead of fundraising for the firm’s tenth fund.

Before going to Sevin Rosen, Sturiale founded infrastructure software company Timbre Technologies, and held executive roles at tech companies Candescent and Quorum Software.

Rossman came to Pequot Capital in 2000 after working as a managing director at Broadview Capital, and holding executive and engineering positions at Acterna Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices. At Pequot, he led investments in Amber Networks and GCT Semiconductor, among others.

Carlyle has also moved principal Ryan Harris and vice president Rachel Winokur to the San Francisco Bay Area to bolster its venture healthcare team.

The new hires come as Carlyle begins to invest its third venture fund, which closed on $605 million in September 2007.

“We believe that growth investing will remain vibrant even in turbulent markets,” Carlyle managing director and co-head of venture operations Robert Grady said in a statement.

The Washington, DC-based firm has added personnel across its operations in recent months. Last month the firm hired Bear Stearns’ Steve Sterling as the head of research for its US leveraged finance team. In November the firm hired former Brunswick Group communications director Ellen Gonda as head of its public relations efforts in the Americas, and in October Carlyle added former Morgan Stanley Banker Anand Balasubrahmanyan as a director in Singapore.