Tim Tonella

Tim is the CEO of Matchstar Venture Search and has been a board member and company advisor since 2006. 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. Tim, along with an award-winning Google software developer, founded Priceprotectr.com in 2007.

Price Protector was named by Entrepreneur Magazine/Media as one of the “100 Brilliant Companies of 2011” and acquired in shortly thereafter by a private equity back company.

Previously, Tim was the Western SVP/GM for Merrill Corporation, a billion-dollar privately held technology company. His responsibilities included overseeing all business operations, strategic initiatives, and sales development in the areas of M&A due diligence, electronic content distribution, and document life-cycle management. Tim and his team worked primarily with private equity and venture capital firms, investment banks, and attorneys in the securities, corporate finance, and restructuring areas. Prior to joining Merrill, Tim was a VP, Sales for Bowne Financial, where he led and grew the company’s most profitable business region. Additionally, he had been the GM of a manufacturing and product licensing company, where he doubled revenues and added 2,000 new client accounts in less than two years. Early in his career, Tim held a variety of business development positions with RR Donnelley in their international, telecom, and information services business units, where he personally generated over $700 million in new revenues (in today’s equivalent dollars).

Tim is the former Chairman of the San Francisco Business Forum (a leading Bay Area service provider networking organization), a former member/sponsor of the Life Science Angels, and a current venture partner in the Explorer Group Fund I. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and has an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. Tim is a hard core full contact fighting fan and participant, enjoys traveling, personal training, and Christian outreach. He currently lives in the city of San Francisco with his wife and four children.