Tim Tonella

Location: San Francisco, CA Bio: Tim is the CEO of MatchStar Venture Search, a 17 year old national retained executive recruiting firm that works exclusively with venture backed companies. He has a long history in the venture capital and private equity community and has been involved in the development of several early stage technology companies, including Priceprotectr.com. Co-founded by Tim and an award winning Google software developer, Price Protectr was named by Entrepreneur Magazine/Media as one of the “100 Brilliant Companies of 2011″ and acquired shortly thereafter. Previously, Tim was the Western SVP/GM for Merrill Corporation, a billion dollar privately held technology services company, where he and his team worked primarily with private equity and venture capital firms, investment banks, and securities attorneys. Prior to joining Merrill, Tim was a VP, Sales for Bowne Financial, where he led and grew the company’s most profitable business region. For the first 10 years of his career, Tim worked as a business development leader in RR Donnelley’s Information Services Business Unit – where he opened up markets in Latin America, Europe, and Asia – and personally generated over $300 million in new revenues. Tim is the former Chairman of the San Francisco Business Forum and a former member/sponsor of the Life Science Angels. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and has an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. As an undergrad, Tim co-headed the university’s IEEE organization, the largest collegiate student engineering branch in the nation.