LiveOak Venture Partners announced this week that it has expanded its staff.

LiveOak, based in Austin, added Mike Marcantonio as principal and Mason Rathe as a senior associate. They will focus on new investments and support the firm’s portfolio of companies.

Marcantonio previously worked at Blue Heron Capital and focused on venture and growth stage investments in technology and healthcare – information technology companies. He also worked at Harris Williams focused on mergers and acquisitions and American Capital, a private equity firm.

“Mike’s extensive background in working with early-stage companies and ability to nurture strong value-added relationships with entrepreneurs will be an asset to LiveOak and our portfolio companies as we look to scale the firm to the next level,” Krishna Srinivasan, founding partner at LiveOak Venture Partners, said in a news release.

Mason Rathe, senior associate at LiveOak Venture Partners, courtesy photo.

Rathe previously worked as an intern at LiveOak while completing his MBA at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. He previously worked in the Technology and Life Sciences division of Comerica Bank, where he underwrote over $350 million in capital commitments to early-stage companies. He also worked at US Capital Partners in business development and he created a “weekly newsletter that chronicled key developments in Austin’s startup environment and grew virally to thousands of subscribers,” according to a news release.

“Mason has already shown terrific value-add as an intern at the firm and demonstrated strong leadership in nurturing the local startup environment with his newsletter. These team expansions underscore our intense focus on the Texas venture opportunity and the support of local entrepreneurs with resources to scale their business and reach their full potential,” Venu Shamapant, founding partner at LiveOak Venture Partners, said in a news release.

Ben Scott, Srinivasan and Shamapant founded LiveOak and closed on its first fund in 2014. The firm focuses on early-stage investments in Texas. Its portfolio of companies includes CS Disco, Digital Pharmacist, NSS Labs, Ojo Labs, and Opcity.