When software leaves the screen and starts controlling the physical world, the venture playbook changes. For the last decade, venture capital has concentrated in asset-light SaaS businesses where growth is measured in dashboards and defensibility is defined by retention curves. Sunil Nagaraj has built his firm around a different premise: that the next wave of venture-scale outcomes will come from embedding software and AI into the physical world. From programmable dairy farms to modular satellites and digitized school transportation systems, Sunil’s thesis “software beyond the screen” focuses on companies that combine hardware substrates with software control loops to modernize large, historically underserved markets. In a world where AI compresses development cycles and traditional SaaS moats face pressure, he argues that disciplined, capital-efficient deep tech may offer stronger long-term defensibility than pure software alone.

Inside the episode:

* Why investing off the beaten path allows you to define the fundraising rubric

* Why Sunil is not looking for “bold” founder, but careful, surgical operators

* How Halter turned dairy cows into programmable systems and built a billion-dollar company

* The biggest mistake technical founders make when selling into traditional industries

* Why $2–3M should be enough to get a deep tech product into customers’ hands

* How AI enables closed-loop control in physical systems

* Why intuitive, no-manual interfaces will unlock the next wave of adoption

* Why space investing became viable once it became modular and predictable

* Why you must underwrite for IPO, not M&A, in overlooked markets

* How Sunil runs a concentrated solo GP strategy with board seats and founder flywheels

Watch full episode on YouTube:

About Sunil Nagaraj:

Sunil Nagaraj is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ubiquity Ventures, a seed-stage venture capital firm managing approximately $200 million across three funds and built around a “nerdy and early” investment philosophy. Ubiquity backs founders at the earliest stages, often pre-incorporation, who are embedding software, AI, and sensors into the physical world through what Sunil calls “software beyond the screen.” Over 15 years in venture, he has led seed and Series A investments in companies that have grown to a combined market capitalization of over $40 billion, including six unicorns, returning more than $2 billion to LPs. Prior to founding Ubiquity, Sunil spent nearly a decade at Bessemer Venture Partners, where he led early investments in Auth0 (acquired by Okta for $6.5B), Zapier, Rocket Lab (NASDAQ: RKLB), and Twitch (acquired by Amazon for $1B). Earlier in his career, he was founder and CEO of Triangulate, a venture-backed machine learning dating startup, and worked at Bain & Company, Cisco, and Microsoft.

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