20VC: K9's Manu Kumar on His Approach To Risk, Valuation & Believing What Other People Don't
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch23 Maj 2016

20VC: K9's Manu Kumar on His Approach To Risk, Valuation & Believing What Other People Don't

Manu Kumar founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed stage micro-VC fund based in Palo Alto, according to K9 they invests 'frighteningly early' and like to be the first institutional capital invested in a startup. K9 is an investor in Lyft, Twilio, Occipital, eShares, and their companies have been acquired by the likes of Linkedin, Facebook, Dropbox, Paypal and more. 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 eshares!

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Manu come to found K9 and what was his route into VC? How does Manu define entrepreneurialism and how did this play out in his early life?

2.) "The best buys are found in things most people don't understand or believe in." How does this play out in Manu's investment strategy? ?

3.) "The riskiest thing is the belief there's no risk." How does risk assessment feature in Manu's investment mentality? How does Manu transition this to your portfolio construction? ?

4.) Josh Koppelman states "What has to be remembered is the defining role of price." How much of a role does valuation play in Manu's investment decision making process?

5.) "An absence of losses can give you a great start toward a good outcome." As a seed fund how does Manu approach inevitable losses? How does Manu try and minimize mortality rate?

Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Manu's Fave Book: The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll

Manu's Fave Blog: Strictly VC, Dan Primack: Term Sheet

Manu's Most Recent Investment: GradeScope

As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Manu on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Avsnitt(1431)

20VC: Enterprises Will Not Adopt AI without Forward-Deployed Engineers | Who Wins the Data Labelling Race: How Does it Shake Out? | How Synthetic Data Threatens the Future of Human-Generated Data with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies

20VC: Enterprises Will Not Adopt AI without Forward-Deployed Engineers | Who Wins the Data Labelling Race: How Does it Shake Out? | How Synthetic Data Threatens the Future of Human-Generated Data with Matt Fitzpatrick, CEO of Invisible Technologies

Matt Fitzpatrick is the CEO of Invisible Technologies, leading the company's mission to make AI work. Since joining as CEO in January 2025, he has raised $100M and accelerated AI adoption across indus...

31 Dec 20251h 23min

20VC's Big Fat Quiz of the Year: Founder, Fund and Breakout Company of 2025 | Predictions for 2026: The Company to Buy, The Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win 2026 and The Tailwinds NVIDIA Will Face

20VC's Big Fat Quiz of the Year: Founder, Fund and Breakout Company of 2025 | Predictions for 2026: The Company to Buy, The Biggest Short | Why Salesforce Could Win 2026 and The Tailwinds NVIDIA Will Face

AGENDA: 03:48 Founder of the Year 2025 06:58 Product of the Year 10:05 Fund of the Year 20:52 Breakout Companies of 2025: Who Made the Biggest Impact? 26:57 Biggest Surprises of 2025 32:57 Predictions...

22 Dec 20251h 9min

20Product: On Running's CPO on How to Create Emotion Through Product | Why 99% of Products Fail and How to Create Cults Around Products | The Biggest Product Mistakes On Have Made & Lessons Learned with Gérald Marolf

20Product: On Running's CPO on How to Create Emotion Through Product | Why 99% of Products Fail and How to Create Cults Around Products | The Biggest Product Mistakes On Have Made & Lessons Learned with Gérald Marolf

Gérald Marolf is the Chief Product Officer at On Running. Gérald oversees the full range of On's shoes, apparel and accessories to make sure each delivers performance, comfort and style. Before On, Gé...

19 Dec 202556min

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

20VC: Will SpaceX IPO at $1.5TRN | Will Cursor Kill Figma | Lightspeed Raises $9BN | OpenAI: $1BN from Disney, New CRO & #1 App in App Store | Oracle and Broadcom Hit: Now the Time to Buy?

AGENDA: 03:32 Lightspeed's $9 Billion Fundraise 05:20 The Impact of Mega Funds on Seed VCs 10:09 The Supercycle of Growth and Late-Stage Investments 13:06 Disney Invests $1BN into OpenAI and What It M...

18 Dec 20251h 22min

20VC: a16z's David George on How $BN Funds Can 5×, Do Margins & Revenue Matter in AI & the Most Controversial Bet at a16z

20VC: a16z's David George on How $BN Funds Can 5×, Do Margins & Revenue Matter in AI & the Most Controversial Bet at a16z

David George is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm's Growth investing team. His team has backed many of the defining companies of this era, including Databricks, Figma, ...

15 Dec 20251h 6min

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

20Growth: How Wiz Built a $30BN Brand in Enterprise | What Worked vs What Was a Mega Failure: Lessons Learned | Why Marketers Make the Worst CMOs & What To Look for in Growth with Raaz Herzberg

Raaz Herberg is the Chief Marketing Officer and VP Product Strategy at Wiz, the fastest-growing cloud security company in history. As one of the first 10 employees, Raaz has helped scale the business ...

12 Dec 20251h 16min

20VC OGs: SpaceX Valued at $800BN & Harvey Raises $160M at an $8BN Price | Airwallex Raises $330M and The Battle with Keith Rabois | Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers | IPO Market Predictions for 2026: Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks and SpaceX

20VC OGs: SpaceX Valued at $800BN & Harvey Raises $160M at an $8BN Price | Airwallex Raises $330M and The Battle with Keith Rabois | Netflix Acquires Warner Brothers | IPO Market Predictions for 2026: Anthropic, Stripe, Databricks and SpaceX

AGENDA: 03:46 SpaceX's $800 Billion Valuation: A Deep Dive 09:18 IPO Market Predictions for 2026 18:18 Netflix's Bold Move: Acquiring Warner Brothers 27:43 Tiger's New Fund Strategy 33:02 Databricks' ...

11 Dec 20251h 31min

20VC: Kalshi's $1BN Raise, the Polymarket Feud, and the Battle to Replace Traditional Media

20VC: Kalshi's $1BN Raise, the Polymarket Feud, and the Battle to Replace Traditional Media

Tarek Mansour is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Kalshi, the leader in the world of prediction markets. Just last week, they announced their $1BN raise at an $11BN valuation. In total, they have raised $1.59...

8 Dec 202547min

Populärt inom Business & ekonomi

badfluence
framgangspodden
varvet
rss-jossan-nina
rss-svart-marknad
rss-borsens-finest
avanzapodden
uppgang-och-fall
rss-dagen-med-di
fill-or-kill
lastbilspodden
rss-inga-dumma-fragor-om-pengar
rss-den-nya-ekonomin
bathina-en-podcast
dynastin
rss-kort-lang-analyspodden-fran-di
svd-tech-brief
bilar-med-sladd
24fragor
market-makers