Michael Kim
Partner
Rustic Canyon Partners

Michael Kim is a Northern California partner of Rustic Canyon Partners, a $900 million private equity and venture capital firm based in Santa Monica. Michael joined Rustic Canyon Partners from Accelerator Venture Partners, a San Francisco-based partnership that invests in early stage technology companies.

Formerly an investment banker, Michael was with Morgan Stanley's Technology Mergers and Acquisitions Group in Menlo Park. Michael was directly involved with 27 announced transactions worth over $77 billion for such clients as Hewlett-Packard, Ciena, Seagate, Bay Networks, Netscape and Texas Instruments. Prior to Morgan Stanley, Michael was an associate at The Chase Manhattan Bank in NYC and also worked at IBM.

He is an honors graduate of Cornell University, has an MS from the School of Foreign Service of Georgetown University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business. Michael is on the board of directors for the following Rustic Canyon portfolio companies: Archcom, Auxora, Capella, Dipity, EM4, Insync, NanoNexus and TwoFish.

Michael formerly served on the boards of Lead21, an organization that enables entrepreneurs to advocate free market public policy, and the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank that champions freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility for all individuals by advancing free market policy solutions. He is a Trustee of the Asian Art Museum Foundation, and the former Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Symphonix League of the San Francisco Symphony. In March 2004, Michael was appointed by the Mayor of San Francisco as a Trustee of the San Francisco Employee Retirement System, a $12 billion pension fund. He served as the President of the board for fiscal year 2007, and is currently the Chairman of the Investment Committee.