Joshua M. Rafner, Chief Executive Officer
tel: 415.925.2711 | email Joshua M. Rafner
Joshua M. Rafner is an investment banker and venture investor with more than 15 years of experience advising and financing high-growth technology companies in the U.S. and Europe. Prior to founding Ridgecrest, Mr. Rafner was a Senior Managing Director at Bear Stearns & Co. with primary responsibility for that firm’s global mobile internet and wireless software banking effort. Josh also spent nine years at Hambrecht & Quist, where he was head of International Investment Banking. While at H & Q, Mr. Rafner opened that firm’s London office, founded a Paris-based investment bank known as Hambrecht & Quist Euromarkets and served as its CEO, and co-founded the firm’s Tel Aviv strategic alliance, Tamir Fishman. Mr. Rafner has advised on innumerable public and private M & A transactions and has managed more than two dozen IPOs and follow-on financings for technology companies, including offerings on the French and German markets and the pan-European EASDAQ market. He has worked with, among others, Gemstar, SCM Microsystems, Immersion, Baltimore Technologies, Versatel, Ireland On-Line/PostGEM, Dr. Solomon's, Lernout & Hauspie, Getty Images, Dialog, Sawtek, PSC, Intershop and Genset.
Mr. Rafner has been an investor in dozens of technology companies and a number of venture funds, and has been a director or advisory board member of many companies. Mr. Rafner is also an attorney, and practiced for 7 years with the international firm of O’Melveny & Myers, where his work included mergers and acquisitions, securities law and restructurings. Mr. Rafner served as a law clerk to Chief U.S. District Judge Frank A. Kaufman in Baltimore, Maryland.
Mr. Rafner graduated from Princeton University, where he was awarded the Pyne Prize, Princeton’s highest undergraduate distinction, and earned his degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is also a graduate of Stanford Law School, where he was an editor of the Stanford Law Review. In addition, Mr. Rafner pursued graduate studies at Stockholm University, Sweden as a Fulbright Scholar, and at Oxford University, England.
Among Mr. Rafner’s community and non-profit activities, he currently serves as a Trustee of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and as a Trustee of the Kentfield Schools Foundation. He is also currently the President of the Board of the Kent Woodlands Property Owners Association, and is the President of the Ralston White Retreat Foundation in Mill Valley, California.