SHANGHAI, China & BELLEVUE, Wash. --(Business Wire)-- Feb. 15, 2006 -- Ignition Partners, ("Ignition") a premier venture capital firm based in Seattle joins forces with Duane Kuang, former Director of Intel Capital China and Gary Rieschel, founder and former Managing Director of Mobius Venture Capital to form Qiming, a new investment firm in China. Together with Ignition Qiming plans to invest $200M in early to expansion stage companies in high growth technology sectors servicing the large domestic market in China as well as the robust export sector. While striving to be the investor of choice for entrepreneurs, Qiming will also work closely with other leading venture capital firms in China to deliver the investor value that young Chinese companies require.

Investors in the fund include current Ignition limited partners and will also include a select set of additional institutional investors. "We were very impressed with the integrated team and approach that Qiming brings to this market," said Dan Feder, Managing Director at PRINCO, the investment arm of Princeton University, which is an investor in both Ignition and Qiming. "We are long term investors in China and we think that Qiming/Ignition's combination of operating leadership, local knowledge and real skin in the game are truly distinctive."

"We were drawn to the Qiming partners by our shared values and our common background of being operating executives, and the fact that they have been investing on the ground for as long as almost anyone else," said Steve Hooper, Ignition partner and former CEO of AT&T Wireless. " We view Qiming as part of the Ignition team. All of us at Ignition are eager to travel to China and do everything we can to make this a long term success."

"Having grown up in China and invested in start-ups here for the last 6 years, I am excited to see more and more true innovations every day both in technology and in business models, Clearly China will create some of the world's leading companies in the coming decades," said Duane Kuang. Gary Rieschel, a veteran in the venture business who moved his family to China in early 2005 commented that, "I have been involved in Asia virtually all of my business career. The venture capital industry is entering a new phase in China that will reward deep operating experience and a real commitment to the success of the entrepreneurs. This is a great opportunity for Qiming to create a lasting venture capital franchise in China." In addition to the local founding team of Duane Kuang, Gary Rieschel and Edward Zhou who was previously a senior business development manager at Cisco, Richard Tong and John Zagula, full-time partners in Ignition will be relocating to China as part of the Qiming founding team.

"China is not Silicon Valley. It is evolving fast but it still lacks the long history and depth of serial entrepreneurs. It still lacks some of the VC infrastructure you can take for granted in Silicon Valley. And it is still building the ranks of managers trained in big global brands," said Ming Lei, former chief architect of Baidu (Nasdaq:BIDU), Stanford Business School graduate and founder/CEO of the Qiming/Ignition portfolio company, Yeelion. "I have worked with this team, both as an 'entrepreneur in residence' in Seattle and as a CEO in China and I can tell you that their combination of experience as leaders in some of the world's greatest tech brands -- Microsoft, Cisco and Intel -- is unique and it isn't just talk. It makes a real difference to Chinese entrepreneurs like myself."

About Qiming

The Chinese name Qiming means starting, enlightening and it also signifies the beginning of a new day. Based in Shanghai, Qiming aims to be a premier venture capital firm focused on investments in technology ventures in China, in partnership with Ignition Partners in the U.S.. Qiming's partners are proven business leaders and venture capitalists with strong operational background in both the U.S. and in China. Qiming will seek out early to expansion stage companies in high growth technology sectors servicing the large domestic market in China as well as the robust export sector. While striving to be the investor of choice for entrepreneurs, Qiming will also work closely with other leading venture capital firms in China to deliver the investor value that young Chinese companies require.

About Ignition Partners

Ignition Partners, (www.ignitionpartners.com), headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., is a premier venture capital firm focused on investments in software and communications technology, with a particular emphasis in enterprise and consumer facing software and services, telecommunications and network infrastructure. Ignition brings together an unparalleled combination of domain focus, technical expertise and global operational experience. Ignition's partners are proven business leaders who have built some of the world's most successful businesses of the last two decades, including Microsoft Windows and Office, McCaw Cellular Communications, and AT&T Wireless. The VC's founders are also credited with leading McCaw's entry into wireless and Microsoft's Internet turnaround.

About the Qiming Partners

Duane Kuang

Until recently, Duane Kuang was the Director of Intel Capital China. In this capacity, Duane was in charge of all of Intel Capital's investment activities in China. During his 6 year tenure, Duane and his team invested in over 40 Chinese companies which resulted in more than 10 IPOs and mergers and acquisitions. He was named top 10 venture capitalist of the year in China twice during the last five years. Prior to Intel Capital, Duane spent over 5 years at Cisco Systems in China, holding various senior management positions in the sales and marketing organization in Beijing and Guangzhou. Before returning to China in 1994, Duane had a successful engineering and management career in both startup and large global companies in Silicon Valley. Duane was born in China and educated in the United States. He holds an MBA degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Gary Rieschel

Gary Rieschel has over 25 years of operating and investing experience in the information technology industry. Most recently, Gary was the founder of SOFTBANK Venture Capital/Mobius Venture Capital in the U.S. (1996), a firm with nearly $2 billion USD under management. In this role, Gary invested in over 50 technology companies leading to successful IPO exits at UTStarcom, Concentric Networks, Verisign, USWeb, Net2Phone, Puma Technology (through acquisitions), Digimarc, Intertrust, and Critical Path, and successful M&A transactions for Art.com (Getty Images), and Datapower (IBM). Gary has led investments in Chinese companies TopSec, Accelergy, Bokee (Blog China), and Yeelion. Gary has also sponsored the creation of several other top venture firms, including Ignition Partners (partners in Qiming), Grandbanks Capital, and Arrowpath in the U.S., and SOFTBANK Asia Infrastructure Fund I/II (SAIF Partners) in China. Prior to his 10 years as a venture capitalist, Gary held senior executive positions at nCUBE (Sr. VP), Cisco Systems (Director, Worldwide Channels/Programs), Sequent Computer Systems (General Manager Asia Pacific), and Intel Corporation (Quality Assurance Manager). Gary holds a B.A. from Reed College where he serves on the board of trustees, and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Rich Tong

Rich is a founding partner of Ignition Partners. Together with John Zagula, he led Ignition's efforts to study the China market. At Ignition, Rich invests in telecommunications and wireless as well as end-user/consumer-facing companies. Prior to Ignition, Rich spent 12 years at Microsoft where he held several key leadership roles including the first Chinese American Corporate Vice President. As Vice President of Marketing for MS Office and BackOffice, he oversaw the purchase and integration of over 20 different companies and technologies into the Microsoft enterprise software family and built and led the marketing teams for Windows, NT, Exchange, SQL Server, BackOffice and Internet server. Throughout his career at Microsoft Rich played an ongoing role as spokesperson for Microsoft's relationship with the China market. Previous to Microsoft, Rich spent over nine years in a broad range of technical research and analysis roles at Brentwood Associates (predecessor to Redpoint), LSI Logic, the Stanford Center for Integrated Systems, Morgan Stanley & Co., and Bell Telephone Laboratories. Rich received his MBA and MS degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He received his B.S. (summa cum laude) in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Princeton University. Rich is also co-author of the bestselling, acclaimed book, The Marketing Playbook, translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

John Zagula

John is a partner at Ignition, joining the team within three months of its founding. Together with Rich Tong, he led Ignition's efforts to study the China market. At Ignition, John invests in end-user/consumer-facing companies as well as enterprise software and services. Prior to Ignition, John spent over 8 years at Microsoft in various senior marketing and strategy positions. As General Manager of Global Campaigns he was responsible for Microsoft's overall business-to-business communications across all business targets, products and offerings in all global markets. In previous positions he was responsible for the development of the Microsoft Office brand and marketing the desktop and server applications product lines including the launches of every version of Office and all of its component applications. Before Microsoft, John was at American Express where he launched specialized financial services subsidiary operations in Asia, Latin America and Europe. John was also an associate at International Data Corporation where he wrote the first industry whitepaper on the Desktop Publishing Industry. John holds a Masters in International Economics and Monetary Theory from the Fletcher School (Harvard/Tufts), a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Marquette University and a Fulbright Scholarship at the Universitaet zu Koln. John is also the co-author (along with Rich) of the bestselling, acclaimed book, The Marketing Playbook.

Edward Zhou

Until recently, Edward was the senior manager of Corporate Business Development for Cisco Systems. He was in charge of Cisco's strategic investments in China during 2004 and 2005. His efforts led to a total investment of US$40 million by Cisco and its VC partners. In this capacity, he was also responsible for acquisitions and strategic partnerships in the Asia Pacific region. Prior to his corporate business development role, Edward worked as a technical marketing manager at Cisco China. Edward started his career with IBM China in 1995. He has held a number of sales & marketing management positions within IBM China before joining Cisco China in 2000. Edward holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and a Masters (with distinction) and B.Sc. in Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University.