# Dado Banatao

> Dado Banatao is a Series A investor at Tallwood Venture Capital backing Fitness and Hardware. See 5 investments, check sizes, portfolio. Updated Aug 2026.

- Type: Angel Investor
- Fund: [Tallwood Venture Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/tallwood-venture-capital)
- Location: San Francisco, United States
- Total investments: 5
- Last investment: Sep 2011
- Lead investor: 0%
- Last updated: Aug 2026
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dado-banatao-ba478224

Dado Banatao is a Series A investor at Tallwood Venture Capital in San Francisco focused on Fitness and Hardware. Dado Banatao is the managing partner of Tallwood Venture Capital. With his past experiences as an entrepreneur, Dado provides Tallwood with a unique perspective in technology investments. Tallwood invests in unique and hard-to-do semiconductor technology solutions for computing, communication, and consumer platforms.Prior to forming Tallwood,Dado was a venture partner at the Mayfield Fund. He co-founded three technology startups: S3 (SBLU), Chips & Technologies (INTC) and Mostron. He also held positions in engineering and general management at National Semiconductor, Seeq Technologies, Intersil and Commodore International. Dado pioneered the PC chip set and graphics acceleration architecture that continue to be two of the foundation technologies in every PC today. As an engineer, he is credited with developing several key semiconductor technologies and is regarded as a Silicon Valley visionary.Dado serves as Chairman of Ikanos (IKAN), Inphi Corporation and Quintic Corporation and is on the board of directors of Alphion Corporation, Wave Semiconductor and Wilocity. He also served as Chairman and led investments in SiRF Technology, acquired by CSR; (CSR); Marvell Technology Group (MRVL); Acclaim Communications, acquired by Level One (INTC); Newport Communications, acquired by Broadcom (BRCM); Cyras Systems, acquired by Ciena (CIEN); and Stream Machine, acquired by Cirrus Logic (CRUS)Dado holds a B.S.E.E., cum laude, from the Mapua Institute of Technology in the Philippines and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

## Investment focus

### Industry

| Industry | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Fitness | 1 | 20% |
| Hardware | 1 | 20% |
| Software | 1 | 20% |
| Electronics | 1 | 20% |
| Clean Energy | 1 | 20% |

7 industries tracked in total.

### Stage

| Stage | Investments | Share |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Series A | 1 | 20% |
| Series B | 1 | 20% |
| Series C | 1 | 20% |
| Funding Round | 1 | 20% |

## Investments

| Company | Description | Amount | Stage | Date | Website |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Striiv | Striiv, a Redwood City, CA-based start-up that develops portable fitness devices. |  | Series A | Sep 07, 2011 |  |
| Redfern Integrated Optics | Redfern Integrated Optics develops and manufactures optical transmitters based on proprietary PLANEX (Planar External Cavity Laser) technology, which enables high performance at low cost for various applications.RIO planar ECL consists of a gain chip and a planar waveguide circuit (PLC) with Bragg grating which forms a laser cavity. This hassignificant advantages such as; very narrow spectral linewidth, low phase noise and RIN, optimized chirp, low wavelength sensitivity to temperature and bias current, and low power consumption. | $7.5M |  | May 13, 2008 |  |
| Redfern Integrated Optics | Redfern Integrated Optics develops and manufactures optical transmitters based on proprietary PLANEX (Planar External Cavity Laser) technology, which enables high performance at low cost for various applications.RIO planar ECL consists of a gain chip and a planar waveguide circuit (PLC) with Bragg grating which forms a laser cavity. This hassignificant advantages such as; very narrow spectral linewidth, low phase noise and RIN, optimized chirp, low wavelength sensitivity to temperature and bias current, and low power consumption. | $7M |  | Dec 06, 2006 |  |
| Redfern Integrated Optics | Redfern Integrated Optics develops and manufactures optical transmitters based on proprietary PLANEX (Planar External Cavity Laser) technology, which enables high performance at low cost for various applications.RIO planar ECL consists of a gain chip and a planar waveguide circuit (PLC) with Bragg grating which forms a laser cavity. This hassignificant advantages such as; very narrow spectral linewidth, low phase noise and RIN, optimized chirp, low wavelength sensitivity to temperature and bias current, and low power consumption. | $8.4M | Series C | Jul 13, 2005 |  |
| Silicon Access Networks | Silicon Access Networks is a provider of an ultra-high performance chipsets for terabit routers and communication silicon to the networking and telecommunications market. | $28M | Series B | Feb 08, 2000 |  |

5 of 5 investments shown.

## Co-investors
- [Advent International](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/advent-international) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [GE Equity](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/ge-equity) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [iD Ventures America](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/id-ventures-america) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Jolimont Capital](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/jolimont-capital) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Redfern Photonics](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/redfernphotonics) — VC Fund, 1 deal together
- [Southern Cross Venture Partners](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/southern-cross-venture-partners) — VC Fund, 1 deal together

## About Tallwood Venture Capital

VC Fund · Menlo Park, United States

Tallwood Venture Capital focuses on investments in differentiated technologies and products that they believe will have a significant impact on the semiconductor industry. They seek out talented entrepreneurs and potent ideas likely to make a real difference in semiconductor and semiconductor-related markets.By offering deep semiconductorknowledge, direct operating experience and a high degree of availability, Tallwood builds close, active working relationships with their portfolio companies.They have over $600 million currently under management. This capital management level puts Tallwood Venture Capital on par with the semiconductor segments of the largest venture capital firms in the industry.

4 contacts available at Tallwood Venture Capital.

| Name | Title | Profile |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Dado Banatao | Managing Partner & Founder | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/dado-banatao |
| Hailong Sun | Invest Manager | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/hailong-sun |
| Luis Arzubi | General Partner | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/luis-arzubi |
| Stella Pan | Office Manager | https://shizune.co/investors/profile/stella-pan |

## Similar investors

### Similar stage
- [Antler](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/antler-be9c) — VC Fund
- [Alumni Ventures](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/alumni-ventures-group) — VC Fund
- [General Catalyst](https://shizune.co/investors/profile/general-catalyst-partners) — VC Fund

## FAQ

### What does Dado Banatao invest in?

Dado Banatao invests primarily in Fitness, Hardware and Software startups, most often at Series A and Series B stage. Most of the 5 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.

### When did Dado Banatao last invest?

The most recent investment recorded for Dado Banatao closed in Sep 2011. Shizune tracks 5 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.

### Is Shizune's investor data accurate?

Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.

# About Shizune
Shizune.co is an investor database. Core features:
- 48,091 startup investors (angels, VCs, accelerators, and others)
- Email, phone, LinkedIn (for intros), socials, and other contact data
- Updated daily from public funding news
- CSV and Excel export

The User can access the full database FOR FREE after signing up: shizune.co