Podcasts about k9 ventures

Vinay Shet is co-founder and CEO of Teleo, who is revolutionizing the construction industry by retrofitting traditional heavy equipment with autonomous and remote-operated technology to create supervised autonomous machines. Key topics in this conversation include: The challenging labor shortage for operating heavy equipment How Teleo blends teleoperations and autonomy The types of problems that Teleo solves for their customers Links: Show notes: http://brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/vinayshet Website: https://www.teleo.ai/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@teleo756 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/teleo-ai/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TeleoAI Short bio: As Teleo's co-founder and CEO, Vinay Shet is responsible for setting the strategic vision of the company and putting in place the elements needed to bring that vision to life. He previously was Director of Product Management at Lyft Level 5 leading the Mapping, Data, and Knowledge efforts for Lyft's self-driving car initiative. Before Lyft, Vinay was at Google leading Product Management for Google Street View, Google Maps, and Google reCAPTCHA, products that are used by millions of people worldwide. At Google, he led the team that pioneered the use of machine learning to create maps data from Google Street View and Aerial Imagery. Additionally, he was also one of the creators of Google reCAPTCHA's “I'm not a robot” CAPTCHA. Vinay has a Ph.D. in Computer Science focusing on Computer Vision from the University of Maryland, College Park and was a Scientist at Siemens Corporate Research, focused on Machine Learning and Computer Vision, for several years post-Ph.D. He has published over 20 papers and has over 25 issued/pending patents. Company description Teleo is revolutionizing the construction industry by retrofitting traditional heavy equipment with autonomous and remote-operated technology to create supervised autonomous machines. The Teleo Supervised Autonomy technology lets contractors operate existing heavy equipment without an operator in the cab, letting a single person control multiple pieces of equipment from a remote desk. This increases productivity, safety, and operator satisfaction—critical challenges in the construction industry. Teleo is backed by UP.Partners, Trucks Venture Capital, F-Prime Capital, K9 Ventures, YCombinator and a host of industry luminaries. Future of Mobility: The Future of Mobility podcast is focused on the development and implementation of safe, sustainable, effective, and accessible mobility solutions, with a spotlight on the people and technology advancing these fields. linkedin.com/in/brandonbartneck/ brandonbartneck.com/futureofmobility/

Manu Kumar, Founder and Chief Firestarter of K9 Ventures, talks about how he balances being an investor and a founder. He shares unique insights from his experience founding Carta, HiHello and his other startups, and lessons from his high-conviction type of investing.In this episode, you'll learn:[3:32] Why solo GPs prioritize deal quality over quantity, and best ways to catch their attention[9:08] Entrepreneurs need to have strong conviction in their idea and show that they will take the leap, leave everything else and start their company.[14:59] Carta's tough time raising capital; investors thought it was “essentially replacing spreadsheets”[19:07] Why recruiting a founder rarely worksAbout Guest SpeakerDr. Manu Kumar is the Founder and Chief Firestarter of K9 Ventures, Co-Founder and CEO at HiHello, and the Co-founder, Investor, and Board Observer at Carta. He's also a board member in several companies, including Everlaw, enuma, Nexkey, Bugsee, Traptic, Crave.io Inc., Avoma, Forethought Technologies, Workona Inc., HiHello, Invisible AI, and Daughters of Rosie. Manu is a self-confessed entrepreneur at heart. He started his first company (SneakerLabs, Inc.) at the age of 20 with $5,000 from a summer internship.About K9 VenturesK9 Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in concept-stage and seed-stage technology startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. K9 Ventures has made more than 74 investments. More than 25% of them are diversity investments. The firm's most notable exits include Lyft, Twilio, and Osmo. Companies in its current portfolio include Teleo, Invisible AI, Avoma, Forethought, Nexkey, Everlaw among others.Subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode. Follow Us:  Twitter | Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook

On this episode of How to Raise a Round, we sat down with Theo Miller– founder and CEO of Hit Start Media–to discuss his $600k Pre-Seed. Hit Start is a media production startup focused on creating strategic first-party podcast content, and produces several shows at Carta–including How to Raise a Round.Theo didn't start his career in tech–he actually was trained as an actor, and was working toward becoming a playwright. When the recession hit in 2008, he taught himself to code and design, and landed a job as a freelance designer.He was hired by Carta–or eShares as it was known at the time– as one of the first five employees. After the company began to rapidly scale, Theo felt that he no longer had a place there. After leaving Carta, Theo explored different podcasting styles with his friend, business partner, and early Carta team member, Zibbie Nwokah. After acquiring clients and regular revenue, the pair realized that Hit Start should be a media company that was software enabled, built for scale.As Hit Start took a more solid shape, Zibbie reached out to their network, finding a significant amount of interest from angel investors. Theo began looking for an investor who could lead his round, and offer some solid experience and advice as Hit Start began to scale.Theo was looking to reach out to Manu Kumar, co-founder of Carta. Manu is the founder and Chief Fire-Starter at the pre-seed fund K9 Ventures, and is regarded as one of the most renowned investors in Silicon Valley. When Theo emailed Manu asking for a meeting, he accepted immediately. From his experience as a writer and performer, Theo recognized that he couldn't just give Manu a rehearsed presentation and be done with it–he needed to tell a good story above anything else.Manu agreed to come on as Hit Start Media's lead investor and invest $500k in the company if Theo could secure the next $100k through his own connections. From there, he reached out to executives in his network who agreed to become angel investors.In April of 2021, Theo raised Hit Start's $600K Pre-Seed round, led by K9 Ventures and filled out by checks from three angel investors.Learn more about Hit Start Media ›

Produced by Foundersuite (www.foundersuite.com), "How I Raised It" goes behind the scenes with startup founders and investors. This episode is with Michael Kim of Cendana Capital (https://www.cendanacapital.com/), a "fund of funds" that invests in very early stage venture capital funds. In this episode, Michael talks about why he started Cendana Capital and how he raised his fund, the types of emerging VCs he prefers to invest in (and what he's looking for when meeting a new VC), the evolution of seed investing, tips for raising an inaugural fund, the process for raising capital from a FoF, and much more. The VC funds that Cendana Capital has invested in include: US Seed: 11.2 Capital, Accelerator Ventures, Angular Ventures, Bowery Capital, Collaborative Fund, Forerunner Ventures, Founder Collective, Freestyle Capital, IA Ventures, L2 Ventures, Lerer Hippeau, MHS Capital, Montage Ventures, Moxxie Ventures, Neo, NextView Ventures, Silicon Valley Data Capital, Spider Capital, Susa Ventures, Uncork VC (fka SoftTech VC), Wave Capital and XYZ Ventures US Pre-Seed: Better Tomorrow Ventures, Bolt VC, Engineering Capital, K9 Ventures, Mucker Capital, Notation Capital, PivotNorth Capital, Rhapsody Venture Partners, Root Ventures and Wonder Ventures International Seed: 01VC, Blackbird Ventures (AUS and NZ), Cherubic Ventures, ChinaRock Capital Management, Entree Capital, Golden Ventures, Leo Capital, Moonfire, Saama Capital and System.One How I Raised It is produced by Foundersuite, makers of software to raise capital and manage investor relations. Foundersuite's customers have raised over $3 Billion since 2016. Create a free account at https:/www.foundersuite.com/

Manu Kumar is redefining venture by focusing on building. Learn more about K9 Ventures ›

Listen now (46 min) | We’re excited to release our newest episode with another great guest, Jaclyn Freeman Hester, Partner at the Foundry Group. Founded in 2007 by Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson, Ryan McIntyre, and Seth Levine The Foundry Group has $2.4B under management and has invested in startups such as FitBit, SendGrid, Beeswax, and Notion. Several years ago the firm, led by Jaclyn and Lindel Eakman, started investing in interesting emerging manager firms, and have acted as LP’s in firms such as Forerunner, K9 Ventures, Founder Collective, IA Ventures, Homebrew, and Ludlow. Get on the email list at ventureunlocked.substack.com

Manu Kumar is the Founder @ K9 Ventures, one of the leading seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Carta, Lyft, Twilio, Auth0 and Lucidchart to name a few incredible companies. Prior to K9, Manu was either the founder or co-founder of 4 companies, 3 of which with successful exits and the 4th being the fantastic Carta. Manu also has an incredible model with K9 where he not only invests in companies but also founds them and is currently the founder and CEO @ HiHello, the company that allows you to network smarter providing digital business cards designed to help you curate and grow your network.  In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Manu made his way into the world of venture having founded 4 prior companies and how he came to found K9 and be one of the OG's of pre-seed funding, having coined the term? 2.) What does Manu believe have been the biggest and most significant changes in the early stage market over the last 7 years? How does Manu evaluate the rise of operator and scout funds? Would Manu agree with Semil Shah, "founders are voting with their feet and taking multi-stage money at seed?" What advice does Manu give to founders on taking multi-stage money at seed? How does Manu evaluate their aggressive movement back into the seed stage? Why is it? 3.) Given Manu only makes 3-4 new investments per year, how does Manu think about and assess his own portfolio construction today? How does Manu think about building temporal diversification into the portfolio? What does Manu believe is the biggest mistake early-stage managers make in the first few years? Why does Manu believe that "group think" is so dangerous for funds today? What can they do deliberately to avoid it? 4.) Manu not only invests but also founds companies at the same time, how does Manu split his time and what does his day look like? What are the benefits of investing and operating simultaneously? What are the biggest challenges and drawbacks? What elements did Manu believe as an investor before starting his new company, HiHello, that he has now changed his mind on, post founding the company? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Manu’s Fave Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People Manu’s Most Recent Investment: Workona: A Better Way To Work As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Manu on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.  

Everlaw is bringing modern data management, visualization and machine learning to eDiscovery, the process in which legal entities review large amounts of evidence to build a case. Today, the company announced a $62 million Series C investment. CapitalG (Alphabet's growth equity investment fund) and Menlo Ventures led the round. Existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and K9 Ventures also participated. The startup has now raised $96 million, according to the company.

Karl Sun is the Founder & CEO @ Lucidchart, a visual workspace that combines diagramming, data visualization, and collaboration to accelerate understanding and drive innovation. To date, Karl has raised $114M with Lucidchart from some of the best in the business including K9 Ventures, Meritech, Iconiq, GV and Kickstart in Utah. As for Karl, prior to founding the company he spent 6 years at Google in some fascinating roles including Head of Patents, Head of Business Development in China and running Google’s energy investments. As a result of his success, Karl was recently announced as EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year.   In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Karl made his way into the world of SaaS with the founding of Lucidchart having been Head of Business Development for Google in China and Head of Patents? How does one know when we need to hire generalists vs specialists? How does this requirement change as the company scales? How does Karl fundamentally think about finding great talent and keeping top of funnel full? How does Karl think about working with recruiters? What works? What does not work? Karl has been in every interview for every new hire for the first 6 years of the business, why? How does Karl think about doing this at scale? How does Karl structure the hiring process today? Why do they have a hiring committee? What does the process look like? How do they assess and test for culture?   How does Karl think about retaining agility and flexibility with scale? How does Karl maintain employee empowerment with the implementation of process? How does Karl think about the balance between creating accountability without a fear of failure? What are the challenges of this?      Karl’s 60 Second SaaStr: What is the hardest role to hire for today? Why? Hardest element of karl’s role as CEO today? Why? What does Karl know now that he wishes he had known at the founding of the company? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Karl Sun

Dr. Manu Kumar covers how HiHello is reworking the concept of a business card.

Auth0, a 2013-founded identity and authentication platform, has pushed into unicorn territory with a $1 billion valuation after raising $103 million in its latest Series E round. The round was led by Sapphire Ventures, with participation from K9 Ventures, Telstra Ventures and several others. In all, Auth0 total funding tops $210 million to date.

Henry Ward is the Founder & CEO @ Carta, the startup that helps private companies, public companies, and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. To date, Henry has raised over $147m in funding from some of the industries leading investors in USV, Spark, K9 Ventures and Meritech and then also leading founders including Flexport's Ryan Petersen, Transferwise's Taavet Hinrikus and Slack's Stewart Butterfield. Prior to founding Carta, Henry was Founder of SecondSight, a portfolio optimization platform for retail investors. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Henry made his way into the world of startups and came to found the gamechanger of cap tables and valuations with Carta? 2.) What does Henry mean by the term "executive half-life"? How does Henry determine between an exec that can scale with the company and an exec that cannot? What are the leading indicators? When weaknesses are revealed, how does this manifest itself? Does the exec open up and admit to it or does the leadership team have to be proactive? 3.) Question from Manu @ K9: As a first time CEO, what have been the biggest personal challenges for Henry in the scaling of himself? Why does Henry think it is unfair founders are given exemption from blame in scaling but execs are not? How does Henry make decisions differently now to the early days? What have been the improvements? 4.) How does Henry buck the conventional wisdom with his willingness to go after very small markets? What does the N of 1 vs 1of N rule mean here? Why does Henry believe the N of 1 markets is the most attractive? What are the core advantages to owning your market? How can founders think about insertion points? When is the right time to add additional products? How does Henry respond to the traditional notion of "focus"? 5.) Why does Henry believe most founders are afraid to put investors to work? If fundraising is, as Henry suggests "an auction process", what can founders do to optimise it? How does Henry approach the element of value creation and value extraction? How does this influence his approach to pricing? How does Henry think more tech founders can leverage acquiring services businesses and automating their processes over time? Where is the arbitrage in pricing here? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Henry’s Fave Book: The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Henry on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Manu Kumar is the founder of K9 Ventures, a technology-focused Pre-Seed fund based in Palo Alto, California. K9 Ventures was the first "pre-seed" venture firm in the industry, and Manu was the first investor in companies like Twilio, Lyft, Carta, Crowdflower, and many more. Manu has a truly unique outlook on the VC business, and has a highly disciplined (and successful) investment model that he's stuck with since the beginning. In this episode, we discuss Manu's time at Carnegie Melon and Stanford, where he received his PhD, his success as an entrepreneur, how he started K9 as a solo GP, his unique investment approach and portfolio construction strategy, and how he is planning to build K9 Ventures in the decades to come.

Eugenio Pace is the cofounder of Auth0, a technology company that builds a suite of modern platforms for developers. The company has raised to date $110 Million from the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners,Trinity Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Sapphire Ventures, or K9 Ventures amongst other VC firms.

Eugenio Pace is the cofounder of Auth0, a technology company that builds a suite of modern platforms for developers. The company has raised to date $110 Million from the likes of Bessemer Venture Partners,Trinity Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Sapphire Ventures, or K9 Ventures amongst other VC firms.

In episode 17 of Venture Confidential, Manu Kumar stops by the Heavybit studio to talk about how he started a micro VC called K9 Ventures and why he chooses to invest in and help grow early stage companies.

In episode 17 of Venture Confidential, Manu Kumar stops by the Heavybit studio to talk about how he started a micro VC called K9 Ventures and why he chooses to invest in and help grow early stage companies. The post Ep. #17, Feat. Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures appeared first on Heavybit.

Alex Fishman, the founder and CEO of Bugsee, a bug reporting tool for iOs and Android. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Hard Thing About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? –  Henry Worth Favorite online tool? – Gmail Do you get 8 hours of sleep?—I wish If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "You want start playing in the startup ecosystem as early as possible when you have less commitments and less things to worry about"   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:18 – Nathan introduces Alex to the show 01:31 – Bugsee is bug reporting tool for iOs and Android 01:51 – Bugsee provides video network and blog, leading out to the event 02:15 – You will not only know that the app crashed, but what led it to crash 02:50 – Bugsee is a SaaS model and they price based on the app size 03:19 – For an app that has 500K users, it will cost $500 03:40 – Bugsee provides different levels of value 04:33 – Average customer pay per month 04:45 – Bugsee started in January 2016 05:01 – Bugsee started charging in December 2016 05:20 – Bugsee has 1100 sign ups and 30% have used Bugsee 06:22 – Alex mentions why he calls users as customers, too 06:40 – Most customers are given free tier to continue using Bugsee 07:11 – New customers use the plan available 07:30 – The limitations of Bugsy's free plan 08:52 – Number of paying customers 09:20 – Bugsee is funded by K9 Ventures 09:33 – Bugsee has raised $1.2M 09:40 – Bugsee had a previous failed attempt 09:53 – The cap table had been reset by Bugsee 10:43 – The previous attempt was in July 2015 10:57 – Team size 11:05 – The team is remote 11:24 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Users are also customers, regardless of whether you sell them on something or not. Having a failed attempt does NOT mean you should give up. Start playing in startup field as early as possible and while you're still free of obligations. Resources Mentioned: Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Drip – Nathan uses Drip’s email automation platform and visual campaign builder to build his sales funnel Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to the quality of Toptal Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible. Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books. The Top Inbox  – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Jamf – Jamf helped Nathan keep his Macbook Air 11” secure even when he left it in the airplane’s back seat pocket Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Michael Kim is the founder of Cendana Capital, one of the first fund of funds focused entirely on backing micro-VC firms. Since 2010, Cendana has been a very early institutional backer of firms like Lerer Ventures, Forerunner, Founder Collective, IA Ventures, SoftTech VC, K9 Ventures, among others. In this episode, we discuss Michael's path to starting Cendana and how he thinks about and decides to back venture capital firms. You can find Michael on twitter at @MKRocks and Cendana at @CendanaCapital

FounderLine host Joe Beninato and guest Manu Kumar of K9 Ventures answer listener questions including: - Describe an instance where you had to be persistent to get a deal done or hire someone. How did you balance being persistent and not being pain in the neck at the same time? - Every investor says the best way to reach them is through their network. What is the best way a founder with engineering background who does not have a network, start building their network that will vouch for them? - Why do you require your founders to be technical as opposed to having a mix of business and technical?  Are there any drawbacks to having an all technical team? - It seems that seed stage investors have different perspectives on taking board seats. Can you please share you thoughts on this topic? - What is your stance on startups offering early exercise (83B) to their employees?