Matt Carroll, co-founder and CEO of Immuta, shares an inspirational story about the lessons he learned while serving as a US Army Intelligence Officer in Baghdad and how that experience still helps shape his organization. In this conversation with Venu, he talks about the culture of a company and the reality that data falls in the overlapping zone between law and technology. He highlights the factors driving growth, expansion and competition.

Balaji Parimi, Founder and CEO of CloudKnox, shares his experiences building the company from inception to its recent exciting acquisition by Microsoft. CloudKnox is a cybersecurity startup which has essentially defined its tech category, Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM), which involves refining how enterprises protect critical cloud resources from insider threats, whether malicious or accidental.

In this episode, we sit down with Kannan Muthukkaruppan, co-founder of YugabyteDB, a high-performance distributed SQL database for global, internet-scale applications.

In this episode, we sit down with Kumar Ramachandran, Founder and CEO at CloudGenix, to discuss his experiences as an entrepreneur and advice to founders. Topics include Kumar’s experience founding CloudGenix (0:51); How he created and fostered a successful founding team (4:03); The importance of leveraging early customer relationships to validate and refine products (6:30); Kumar’s advice for founders on achieving consistent growth (10:03); How CloudGenix created a non-linear growth trajectory (15:07); and the key factors to achieving success from startup inception to exit (21:07).

In this episode, we sit down with Rei Carvalho, Co-founder and former CEO at Emailage, to discuss his entrepreneurial experiences, achieving predictable growth and managing competition. Topics include Rei’s background (1:10); His experience founding Emailage (1:35); The importance of building a successful team (3:06); What he looks for when hiring and how to know when to let someone go (5:25); Rei’s advice for CEOs on predicting growth and profitability (10:48); How to minimize internal, partner and competitor conflict (18:47); and Rei’s career plans post-Emailage (27:56).

In our eighth episode, we sit down with Matthew Halliday, Co-founder and SVP of Product Strategy at Incorta, to discuss product management, decision-making and advice for founders during this unprecedented time. Topics include Matthew’s experience founding Incorta (1:35); How to acquire a strong customer base via product-market fit (4:07); How to build a product for a variety of use cases and Matthew’s advice to product managers (8:56); The importance of knowing when to say yes and when to say no (14:55); How to make sense of the crowded BI and Analytics landscape (17:19); and the opportunities Matthew sees for a post-COVID-19 world (24:19).

In our sixth episode, we sit down with T.M. Ravi, Managing Director and Founder of The Hive to discuss developments in the Artificial Intelligence landscape and his experiences successfully co-creating over 25 startups. Topics include The Hive’s mission (1:09); The philosophy behind their co-creation model (3:50); How they’ve remained competitive against Silicon Valley’s traditional venture firms (6:10); The motivation behind T.M.’s focus on AI (7:00); Recent trends in AI development (10:17); How enterprises are integrating AI operations (11:20); The movement from AI frameworks to full optimization (13:56); T.M.’s perspective on the ‘black box’ risks of AI decision making (14:44); The importance of AI explainability (17:15); Changes in the fundraising landscape (18:53); The consequences of VC consolidation (21:08); The value of culture-building in startups (22:45); and T.M.’s advice for founders (24:39).

In our fifth episode, we’re joined by Kathi Rawnsley, Managing Partner of Lowenstein Sandler to discuss the legal framework of fundraising and her successes partnering with startups in Silicon Valley. Topics include Kathi’s background as a lawyer in Silicon Valley (1:28); her role at Lowenstein Sandler (1:48); legal trends in venture capital (3:45); the challenges of an excess of stakeholders (6:10); why unpriced rounds have gained popularity (10:03); the importance of investor mentorship (12:36); Kathi’s term sheet advice (13:54); how to best approach investment terms (15:34); leveraging strong investor relationships (16:50); the difference between corporate vs. traditional VCs (18:30); and Kathi’s advice for startups considering Mergers & Acquisition and/or Liquidity (24:02).

Venu is joined by Jay Leek of ClearSky to discuss his successes as a cybersecurity investor in companies including Demisto, Verodin and BigID. Topics include Jay's background (0:23); how his experiences running security at big corporations prepared him for his role as a VC (1:03); how the life of a CISO has changed in recent years (2:43); what CISO's can do to keep track of the growing security market (4:28); what Jay looks for when making a new investment (8:07); the difference between best-of-breed and all-in-one from a customer adoption and product vendor perspective (9:20); the movement towards DevOps in data security (14:00); ClearSky's investment thesis (18:45); Jay's view on the role people will play in future cybersecurity delivery models (23:30); his anti-portfolio and investments he's passed on and regretted (25:53); and Jay's advice to founders in the cybersecurity space (27:55).