Venky Ganesan
Venky Ganesan is a partner at Menlo Ventures, where he focuses on investments in AI-native software, cybersecurity, and AI infrastructure. He currently serves on the boards of companies including Abnormal AI, Aurascape, BitSight, ConverzAI, Obsidian, Sonrai Security, and Unravel Data. He previously led investments in and served on the boards of Aisera, Dedrone, Poshmark, Rover, and StackRox, and was recognized on the Forbes Midas List from 2013 to 2015. Prior to joining Menlo Ventures in 2013, he was a managing partner at Globespan Capital Partners and a co-founder of Trigo Technologies, which was acquired by IBM.
“Avanex (transcribed 'Avonex'): Optical components company in the dot-com bubble. Venky's personal $5,000 IPO position hit $200,000 and fell back to roughly $8,000–9,000.”
Source→“Go back and look at the history of his capital allocation has been phenomenal. Best of CEOs.”
Source→“Incredible investor... But when you're 4x leverage, it doesn't matter if you're right. You have to also get that timing correct.”
Source→“Each seed investment is an option bet. You're buying an option to see if it's an outlier.”
Source→“benchmark, super hard to beat. And whatever they do, combination of Eric, Chaitan, and Everett, and Jack, they are just a beast.”
Source→“I have tremendous respect for the BESMA folks... they are super disciplined. So if I could invest outside of Menlo, I'd invest in BESMA.”
Source→“There's this group of guys called E14 out of MIT. And I find them to be interesting AI companies and they seem to really understand the MIT ecosystem.”
Source→“the best outcome is getting spooned, which really means getting your capital back.”
Source→“When the Music Is Playing... Chuck Prince, then the CEO of Citigroup”
AI-extracted from podcast / newsletter / paper summaries. May contain errors.