Silicon Valley Comes East

DC’s newest transplant is here. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur will help build a new venture fund and create a future tech city.

Disruption founder Paul Singh lured former 500 Startups colleague George Kellerman (pictured) to serve as a partner, mainly focused on the org's $50M Crystal Tech Fund. (The fund also offers office space at Disruption's HQ to portfolio companies.) George, who talked to us from Crystal City yesterday, says he looked at the JOBS Act and the proliferation of accelerators and early stage investing and realized one thing that hasn’t been solved is helping the most successful startups to scale to the next level. Crystal Tech Fund will invest in revenue-generating companies worldwide. George officially starts Thursday. (Which makes today the last day to do all those home repairs people say they're going to do between jobs.)

George, his wife, and two teen daughters are moving from their Cupertino home, a few blocks from Apple HQ, to Northern Virginia at the end of the school year. Except for doing basic training in New Jersey in the mid '80s, George has never lived on the East Coast and just visited DC for the first time in February. Fluent in Japanese, his work history includes Dell, Experian, and working as a firefighter/rescue crew chief and combat medic in the Air Force and Army Reserves. He’s also worked as an attorney for the Venture Law Group and corporate counsel for Yahoo! This isn’t George surfing, but it’s his No. 1 hobby, along with sailing and kite surfing. (Shhh, don’t tell him you can’t find waves like this on the East coast.)