Latest posts
Announcing K9 Ventures III, L.P. – A $42M technology-focused Pre-Seed fund
42: The Answer to the ultimate fund size? Those of you who have read or watched the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy are aware of the pop culture meme around the number 42. Yes, 42: The answer to life, the Universe, and everything. For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, here’s a clip courtesy […]
Read moreHow to reference check your prospective investor
Of all the advice I have given founders over the years, one of the most important ones is to make sure they do reference checks on their prospective investors. When founders do their homework on investors, they make informed choices about who they will be working with for many many years to come. As the […]
Read moreComputing vs Medicine
In high school, one of the teachers who I respected a lot (she was also feared by a lot of my peers for being a strict disciplinarian) pulled me aside one day and suggested that I should really consider studying Biology and consider medicine as a future. Although my thinking back then as a 15 […]
Read moreRethinking Founder Vesting
So much of what we do in the tech industry is about innovation, disruption, and changing the status quo. But, when it comes to how we go about doing that some of the smaller details tend to get re-used based on previous norms and templates without being revisited or questioned. One of these norms is […]
Read moreHardware-as-a-Service (HaaS)
A couple of years ago I was talking with a company that wanted to build robots. Their proposed price point for the robots was about $20K per unit. It would be a brand new product, that people had never really seen or experienced before, and it would replace some amount of human labor. After thinking […]
Read moreYou Can’t Spell Hardware without H-A-R-D
I started my tinkering with hardware first. As a kid I used to trek down to the “electronics bazaar” in New Delhi, known as Lajpat Rai Market, and go store to store to try and find the components I needed for whatever I was building. It was both fun and frustrating at the same time. […]
Read moreVC Cold Email Outreach: “The Only Winning Move is Not to Play”
Every few weeks one of the founders of K9 Ventures’ portfolio companies forward over an email they’ve received from a “Partner” at a VC firm. And every time I go through the same ritual, explaining to the founder when to respond, when not to respond, and how to respond to such emails. So […]
Read moreManu Kumar on The Twenty Minute VC
Last week I had the pleasure of chatting with Harry Stebbings from The Twenty Minute VC. Harry has done a phenomenal job of getting some of the top people in venture capital on his show and had high-quality, high-bandwidth, and chock full of good information conversations with them in a medium that is highly […]
Read moreGradescope: AI for Grading and Assessment
“I love grading” — I doubt those words have ever been uttered in earnest! The only times I’ve ever heard them or even used them is with a healthy dose of sarcasm. Lot’s of people (me included) will say “I love teaching,” but that love for grading just doesn’t come naturally. Grading gets tedious […]
Read moreStealth is Overrated
“US Navy Sea Shadow stealth craft” by US Navy employee – http://www.chinfo.navy.mil/navpalib/factfile/ships/ship-sea.html. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons. I’ve tweeted this before… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Stealth is overrated. Startups should use every opportunity to get their name out. — Manu Kumar (@ManuKumar) May 29, 2010 …and I’ve said it […]
Read moreEverlaw Raises Series A led by a16z
Today K9 Ventures’ portfolio company Everlaw announced that it has raised $8.1M in a Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from K9 Ventures. I couldn’t be more excited about Everlaw’s Series A round as it reflects a recognition of the amazing work that the company, co-founded by CEO AJ Shankar and Jeff […]
Read more3 contrarian pieces of advice for graduating students
I love teaching (Although I hate grading, but that’s why I invested in Gradescope. More on that some other time). Every time I interact with students, I find myself repeating the same contrarian advice to them over and over again. So I figured I should write up a quick post so that I can point students […]
Read moreAsking for Feedback
We’re becoming and increasingly data driven culture. Whether it is my children’s school, my bank, the last hotel stay, a car service, a visit to the doctor’s office — everyone thinks and believes (rightly so) that they need to collect data on customer satisfaction. And now we have the tools to be able to do […]
Read moreIt’s Not Easy applied to Venture Capital
Note: If you’re a founder, stop reading this post now. Your job is to build your company and listening to VCs pontificate about their industry doesn’t do you any good. If you build a good company, investors will hunt you down. If you don’t, no amount of reading this stuff will help you get funded. […]
Read more#PeakVC
Earlier today I tweeted: Calling #PeakVC. Right here, right now. Done. — Manu Kumar (@ManuKumar) October 13, 2015 But I realized shortly after tweeting this that there is so much nuance packed into that one term #PeakVC that it requires a lot more than 140 characters. So here are some of the things I […]
Read morePictures from #FriendsOfK9 2015
Pictures from the #FriendsOfK9 event on Thursday, September 17th are in! Check them out by clicking through to the album on Facebook… #FriendsOfK9 2015
Read moreWorking to Walk: Designing my Walking Desk
It’s Sunday. I could have stayed home and worked from home for a couple of hours (while the kids are in language school), but instead I chose to come in to the office and work here instead. There were two driving factors for me to come in to work rather than sit on the couch […]
Read moreLearning outside the classroom: HCI in the Real World
One of my reasons for going back to school for a PhD after doing my own startups was that I love the academic environment. I either TA’d or taught for 9 out of my 16 quarters at Stanford. It’s refreshing to be surrounded by smart people, and no matter how smart people may be in various tech corporations, […]
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