Founder Matt Marshall covered venture capital for the San Jose Mercury News until he left in September 2006 to launch VentureBeat as an independent company. In 2007, he teamed up with Eric Eldon, who became the site’s second writer. In early 2008, VentureBeat hired Anthony Ha and veteran reporter Dean Takahashi. More recently, VentureBeat hired Camille Ricketts and Kim-Mai Cutler.

In 2008, the New York Times called VentureBeat one of the “best blogs on the Web,” and now the NYT runs VentureBeat’s articles on its web site. In March 2009, VentureBeat signed a partnership agreement with IDG to produce DEMO, the leading conference for launching emerging technology products.

Matt, who currently serves as Editor-in-Chief, covered the venture capital beat for the San Jose Mercury News from 2001 to 2006. He significantly expanded the newspaper’s coverage of venture capital during that time, in daily articles and a weekly column called the VC Insider, and then online with his blog SiliconBeat from 2004.

Matt was awarded Journalist of the Year by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in 2002, and the James Madison Freedom of Information award in 2003. These awards were for a series of articles he wrote in conjunction with two successful Mercury News lawsuits, in part instigated by Matt, against California’s public pension fund (CalPERS) and the University of California. The lawsuits sought disclosure of the financial performance of venture capital and other private equity funds that CalPERS and UC had invested in, arguing that state taxpayers and retirees had a right to know these results. As a result of these laws suits, public employees now have full access to information on the performance of their retirement investments.

Matt was a correspondent for the Wall Street Journal in Bonn, Germany from 1995 through 1998. In 1999 he wrote a book while in Germany, “The Bank: the Birth of Europe’s Central Bank and the Rebirth of European Power” (Random House, 1999). He has also written for the Washington Post and several other publications. Matt holds a PhD in Government and an MA in German and European Studies from Georgetown University.