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The Sure Shot Entrepreneur

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 works

About Guest Speaker

Dr. 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 Ventures

K9 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.

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