Latest posts
Space Matters: Unveiling The Kennel
In April 2014, in the post Making Moves, I wrote about K9’s impending move to a new space and outlined my reasons for leaving downtown Palo Alto. I loved being in downtown Palo Alto, but it was simply becoming too expensive to be able to consider staying there long term. I deliberated for a […]
Read moreMeet Manu Kumar, Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures
The following interview by Steven Loeb was published in Vator.tv on 5 September 2015 and is reproduced below in its entirety. There has been a big debate over the last few years over whether the Series A crunch is real or not. What everyone can agree on, though, is that there are definitely more seed and […]
Read moreBeing an investor, in four paragraphs
Most days I love what I do, but some days are rough; filled with tough decisions (good ones and bad ones) that are often time sensitive in nature, and involve conflicting interests. The most difficult part however is that as an investor I can’t really talk about or share details with anyone without violating portfolio […]
Read moreDead Ant Dead Ant!
Q: What did Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? A: “Dead Ant! Dead Ant! Dead Ant Dead Ant Dead Ant!” Q: What did Pink Panther do when he saw a live ant? A: He first stepped on it, and then said: “Dead Ant! Dead Ant! Dead Ant Dead Ant Dead […]
Read moreAuth0: Solving the Identity Crisis
We have a problem. The first step to solving that problem is acknowledging it exists. And the second step to solving that problem is start using Auth0. Twenty years ago, most of us had maybe one password, and most often a single identity. Today, it’s almost impossible to manage without a password manager and we […]
Read moreSeed Is The New A – #PreMoney 2015 Talk
Here is the video recording of the talk I gave at 500 Startups‘ PreMoney Conference in San Francisco on 12 June. Seed Is The New A: What The Seed-Stage Explosion Means For Founders, GPs & LPs And the deck from my talk Thanks to 500 Startups #PreMoney As always I welcome your thoughts […]
Read moreThe Seeds Have Changed: An Epilogue
Note: This is a long post and it’s based on reflecting on a couple of years of observations in the venture industry. It’s a work-in-progress and I expect to update (last update 10 June) and refine the content, especially in the next week as I prepare for a talk I’m giving at the PreMoney […]
Read moreStartup Revenue Milestones
At K9 we invest in companies which have a clear/direct revenue model and typically don’t invest in companies that follow the Ubiquity first Revenue Later (URL) revenue model made famous by Eric Schmidt in 2007. In my discussions with K9 portfolio founders about scaling revenue, I very often end up drawing the same picture: […]
Read moreFundraising is for CEOs
I’ve been on the receiving end of many many pitches by this point both via email and in person. One of the patterns that I have seen is that for pre-seed and seed stage companies (could be for later stages like Series A and B as well, but once a company is mature, some […]
Read moreSolo Co-founders
The title of this post is an oxymoron — but it is intentional as it most succinctly captures the essence of this post. Conventional wisdom in the startup world dictates that two founders are ideal for a startup. There are lots of famous pairs of duo co-founders: Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Jerry Yang and […]
Read moreOsmo Masterpiece: No more fear of drawing
I still remember pleading with my elder sister to help me draw the diagrams for my Biology class. She could draw the leaf with perfect proportions and beautiful veins. Her microscope and her digestive system looked so much better than mine! Over the years, I finally just resigned myself to thinking “I suck at drawing.” […]
Read moreFounders on a Mission
I’ve often repeated that the definition of entrepreneurship is “Insane perseverance in the face of complete resistance” (something I learned from my professor and mentor the late Jack Thorne). Put differently, there are some founders for whom failure simply isn’t an option. They’re on a mission and they’re not going to let anything stand in […]
Read moreFinding a Problem Worth Solving
Patagonia, Ben O’Bryan When we started in the PhD program in Computer Science at Stanford, Prof. Rajeev Motwani, who was the “default PhD advisor” for all incoming PhD students told us that our only priority should be to find a research topic that we care about. In fact, Prof. Motwani was so adamant that […]
Read moreManu Kumar in discussion with Joe Beninato
Last fall, Joe Beninato interviewed K9 Ventures founder and Chief Firestarter, Manu Kumar, on his weekly webcast FounderLine Manu talks about the history of K9 Ventures including the origin of the firm’s name. Joe and Manu also talk about K9 Ventures’ investment focus (hint: new technology/new market), investment stage (hint: frighteningly early), teams (hint: need a […]
Read moreWhen Vinod Khosla answered my question with a non-verbal
No, not that kind of non-verbal gesture. I believe this was in April 2010 and if memory serves me correct it was an event hosted at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos by Sand Hill Angels, where Vinod Khosla gave a talk. I was relatively new to the investing world at the time having […]
Read moreStrong (Math) Foundations
When I was an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon, I took a class in Linear Algebra. The class was taught by a visiting graduate student, not by a Carnegie Mellon professor. The instructor of this class was *so* bad that ever since taking that class, I have always had a mental block against linear algebra and […]
Read moreThe Ingenious Osmo
Ingenuity. Ingenuity is a beautiful thing. It’s a beautiful word. It is at the heart of engineering. It is also something I strive to have in every company that K9 Ventures invests in. A lot startup ideas are an incremental or marginal improvement over something that already exists in another form. But, once in a […]
Read moreMaking Moves
For all the stuff we hear in the press about Venture Capital, one thing that you don’t hear about as much is that operating a (small) venture fund is really similar to operating a “small business.” Yes, while we strive to fund the next big business, our own business is a small business. Venture funds tend to […]
Read moreThe New Venture Landscape
In May 2011, I wrote the post: Investor Nomenclature and the Venture Spiral. That post got a lot of attention because back then all the buzz was about “Super Angels.” The venture landscape was evolving and had reached a point where Super Angels were an important part of the ecosystem. Well, now in 2014, almost 3 […]
Read morePartner, Partner, Partner
Shortly after wrapping up our PhDs from Stanford CS, my peer group had a running inside joke. Whenever we would meet at an event, we would greet each other with “Doctor, Doctor, Doctor.” It’s hard to describe in words, but you have to imagine a bunch of geeky guys standing in a circle and shaking […]
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