Dr. Manu Kumar

Chief Firestarter

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My introduction to computing began with a summer camp for kids to do self-paced computer-based training. I’d completed the two week program in a couple of days, and proceeded to spend the rest of the time mastering the remaining courses they had available. Logo was my first computer language, but Wordstar, dBase, and Lotus 1-2-3 were not far behind.

When I was 13 or 14, I convinced my grandmother to buy me a computer—a Commodore 128. By 16, I was hacking code in Pascal. I was hooked.

I left India at the age of 17 to study at Carnegie Mellon. I finished my Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering and then completed a Masters in Software Engineering. While a student, I started my first company, SneakerLabs, Inc., with $5,000 from a summer internship. I bootstrapped the company for 2 years, supporting myself and the company by teaching courses at Carnegie Mellon. In 1998, I raised $1M in funding from local angels in Pittsburgh, PA, and SneakerLabs was off to the races. We went from lows of having $1,000 in the bank (and a $30K payroll!) to ultimately being acquired at the peak of the dot-com bubble in March 2000 in a deal valued at over $100M.

The success of my first company was very much a function of being in the right place at the right time. We did a few things right—building an awesome team being the one I’m most proud of—but I wanted to be sure that this was repeatable. So I helped start a second company at the bottom of the bottom.

iMeet, Inc started in 2000. We raised just $800K and were competing with companies in the Valley that had raised $60M-$100M. We grew the company to cash flow positive and in 2002 merged with Boston-based Netspoke. I stayed on the Board of Directors for Netspoke, but took a break to move out to Palo Alto and pursue a PhD in Computer Science at Stanford. I researched automobile interfaces, and wrote my dissertation on using eye tracking as an augmented input to traditional devices.

In 2005 we sold Netspoke to Premiere Conferencing (NYSE:PGI). Shortly thereafter, I began helping the founder of Lytro start what was at that time called Refocus Imaging. I became an accidental investor when I wrote the first check for Refocus Imaging in March 2006, to encourage the founder to get the company going.

In 2006-2007, I had the opportunity to go up and down Sand Hill Road to help Refocus Imaging raise funding. I observed that:

• Most VCs were doing $3M-$4M Series A investments, but there were few funds that would participate in a sub-$1M round.

• Most firms were not taking on technology risk—the very basis of what Silicon Valley was built upon.

• Very few of the younger generation of investors had actual startup and operating experience.

I saw a need for a new type of seed-stage venture fund, and K9 Ventures was officially formed in April 2009.

I’m an entrepreneur at heart and my passion is starting and building companies. The part I enjoy most is getting from idea to first product. That’s why I chose to focus my investing on the earliest stages of a company’s life, where I get to work directly with founders.