Category archives: Opinion
It’s Not Easy applied to Venture Capital
Note: If you’re a founder, stop reading this post now. Your job is to build your company and listening to VCs pontificate about their industry doesn’t do you any good. If you build a good company, investors will hunt you down. If you don’t, no amount of reading this stuff will help you get funded. […]
Read more#PeakVC
Earlier today I tweeted: Calling #PeakVC. Right here, right now. Done. — Manu Kumar (@ManuKumar) October 13, 2015 But I realized shortly after tweeting this that there is so much nuance packed into that one term #PeakVC that it requires a lot more than 140 characters. So here are some of the things I […]
Read moreWorking to Walk: Designing my Walking Desk
It’s Sunday. I could have stayed home and worked from home for a couple of hours (while the kids are in language school), but instead I chose to come in to the office and work here instead. There were two driving factors for me to come in to work rather than sit on the couch […]
Read moreLearning outside the classroom: HCI in the Real World
One of my reasons for going back to school for a PhD after doing my own startups was that I love the academic environment. I either TA’d or taught for 9 out of my 16 quarters at Stanford. It’s refreshing to be surrounded by smart people, and no matter how smart people may be in various tech corporations, […]
Read moreDead Ant Dead Ant!
Q: What did Pink Panther say when he stepped on an ant? A: “Dead Ant! Dead Ant! Dead Ant Dead Ant Dead Ant!” Q: What did Pink Panther do when he saw a live ant? A: He first stepped on it, and then said: “Dead Ant! Dead Ant! Dead Ant Dead Ant Dead […]
Read moreSeed Is The New A – #PreMoney 2015 Talk
Here is the video recording of the talk I gave at 500 Startups‘ PreMoney Conference in San Francisco on 12 June. Seed Is The New A: What The Seed-Stage Explosion Means For Founders, GPs & LPs And the deck from my talk Thanks to 500 Startups #PreMoney As always I welcome your thoughts […]
Read moreThe Seeds Have Changed: An Epilogue
Note: This is a long post and it’s based on reflecting on a couple of years of observations in the venture industry. It’s a work-in-progress and I expect to update (last update 10 June) and refine the content, especially in the next week as I prepare for a talk I’m giving at the PreMoney […]
Read moreStartup Revenue Milestones
At K9 we invest in companies which have a clear/direct revenue model and typically don’t invest in companies that follow the Ubiquity first Revenue Later (URL) revenue model made famous by Eric Schmidt in 2007. In my discussions with K9 portfolio founders about scaling revenue, I very often end up drawing the same picture: […]
Read moreFinding a Problem Worth Solving
Patagonia, Ben O’Bryan When we started in the PhD program in Computer Science at Stanford, Prof. Rajeev Motwani, who was the “default PhD advisor” for all incoming PhD students told us that our only priority should be to find a research topic that we care about. In fact, Prof. Motwani was so adamant that […]
Read moreManu Kumar in discussion with Joe Beninato
Last fall, Joe Beninato interviewed K9 Ventures founder and Chief Firestarter, Manu Kumar, on his weekly webcast FounderLine Manu talks about the history of K9 Ventures including the origin of the firm’s name. Joe and Manu also talk about K9 Ventures’ investment focus (hint: new technology/new market), investment stage (hint: frighteningly early), teams (hint: need a […]
Read moreWhen Vinod Khosla answered my question with a non-verbal
No, not that kind of non-verbal gesture. I believe this was in April 2010 and if memory serves me correct it was an event hosted at the Hiller Aviation Museum in San Carlos by Sand Hill Angels, where Vinod Khosla gave a talk. I was relatively new to the investing world at the time having […]
Read moreThe New Venture Landscape
In May 2011, I wrote the post: Investor Nomenclature and the Venture Spiral. That post got a lot of attention because back then all the buzz was about “Super Angels.” The venture landscape was evolving and had reached a point where Super Angels were an important part of the ecosystem. Well, now in 2014, almost 3 […]
Read morePartner, Partner, Partner
Shortly after wrapping up our PhDs from Stanford CS, my peer group had a running inside joke. Whenever we would meet at an event, we would greet each other with “Doctor, Doctor, Doctor.” It’s hard to describe in words, but you have to imagine a bunch of geeky guys standing in a circle and shaking […]
Read moreIf I had a hammer…
If I had a hammer,I’d hammer in the morningI’d hammer in the evening,All over this land. So goes The Hammer Song by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays. Well, most VCs have just one tool in their toolbox. And yes, they use the tool to hammer in the morning and hammer in the evening. That tool […]
Read moreA VC trick and a related startup mistake
There is a fundamental information imbalance in the startup world that stems from the fact that most founders are raising money for the first time, but most investors are not investing for the first time. This used to be a much bigger issue ten or fifteen years ago, but these days, it is possible for […]
Read more4 Rules of M&A for Startup Founders
The following post was written by @TomioGeron for ExitRound based on an interview with me and was published on the ExitRound blog on January 9th, 2014. It is being reproduced in its entirety here with permission from the author… Manu Kumar, founder of seed stage venture firm K9 Ventures, focuses on investments that have a hard science […]
Read moreProducers and Consumers on Social Media
I’m making a concerted effort to start blogging again on a more frequent basis. It’s not that I have suddenly discovered lots of free time. However, I’ve decided that it’s time to change priorities. In my attempt to keep up with the demands of work and home I had mostly given up on blogging. Part […]
Read moreProtip for nascent startups on payroll cycles
If you ask most startups how often they run payroll, the most common answer will be: “Twice a month.” Now ask them why they run payroll twice a month, and they will give you a puzzled look and then probably respond with, “I thought that’s how it’s supposed to be,” or, “That’s how often I got […]
Read moreThe problem with getting an MBA
I was reading Dan Primack‘s Term Sheet this morning and saw the part about Chamath Palihapitiya making waves at HBS by telling current MBA candidates that “the overwhelming majority of us would not look favorably on a company started by one of you.” Chamath is correct in making that statement, especially if you’re careful to […]
Read moreWatch out for the Board Observer request
Ah, I love it when someone cancels a meeting with me at the last minute. It’s like found time. So liberating to have an unscheduled hour that I can use for whatever I like. Anyways… I wanted to use some of this time to briefly make a point that I’ve made very often to K9 […]
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