Thinking Beyond a Single Round
About This Talk
Speakers
Tenacity Venture Capital
Ben Narasin is the Founder and General Partner of Tenacity Venture Capital, a pre-Series A venture fund. Immediately previously, Narasin was a full time investor and Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the worlds largest and oldest traditional venture firms. A prolific entrepreneur and highly regarded early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise, Narasin has focused on emerging technologies and new markets throughout his investment career. With a portfolio comprising key early successes in some of today’s fastest growing sectors, such as fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices. His overarching focus in seeking new investments is, in his words, “to find founders who make me say wow.”
Narasin is a 25-year entrepreneur and 10-year early-stage investor. His knack for spotting emerging trends led him to make seed investments in companies like Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. Before NEA, Narasin served as a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, and was prior to that was President of TriplePoint Ventures, the equity arm of TriplePoint Capital, where he oversaw the firm’s seed funding investment activities.
Narasin’s path to investing is rooted in entrepreneurship. He founded several consumer companies before launching his investing career, including Fashionmall.com, one of the first e-commerce companies, which he founded in 1993 and led to a successful IPO in 1999. Narasin frequently writes and speaks about technology and investing, as well as food and wine, a lifelong passion. He holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College.
Khosla Ventures
Rajesh is a Partner at Khosla Ventures and brings with him two decades of experience assisting and investing in deeptech startups. At Khosla Ventures, he manages deeptech investments across climatech, healthcare and advanced manufacturing. Having invested in climatech startups for more than a decade, he is particularly fascinated by materials science innovations that are driving the next generation of climatech startups.
Before joining Khosla Ventures, Rajesh served as the Head of Applied Ventures LLC, the Venture Capital arm of Applied Materials (AMAT) and at Third Point Ventures. At Applied Ventures, Rajesh managed a portfolio of 85 deeptech startups. Driven by a strong interest to provide access to deeptech startups with a state-of-the-art manufacturing fab in the US, Rajesh helped AMAT establish a $850M semiconductor fab in New York. He received Global Corporate Venturing’s (GCV) Powerlist award in 2019.
StarChain Ventures
Jorden is a Caltech-trained astrophysicist, successful 3-time serial entrepreneur with exits, and a pioneer in Web 3 decentralized technologies. He is a Founding Partner at StarChain Ventures, a Silicon Valley based venture studio solving significant global challenges with Web 3/Blockchain plus other advanced technologies such as AI/ML and IoT – a core thesis of his best-selling book, Enterprise Blockchain Has Arrived, co-authored with Radhika Iyengar. Jorden is the host of The Future of Business, an educational videocast series focused on business opportunities with Web 3 and the Metaverse.
Jorden has been very active in the entrepreneurial community over the last 2 decades having raised over $220 million from top tier Silicon Valley and global investors for both his own companies and advised startups. His first company GlobalSight became a market leader and was rated as one of the “Top 50 Private Companies in the World” by both the Red Herring and Upside Magazines. His second company, in 2002, was focused on decentralized technologies and what we now call the Metaverse (the 3D Web). Jorden has been an invited guest speaker at Stanford University, Google, UC Berkeley, MIT, Draper University, and over 100 technology events including leading blockchain and AI conferences in Silicon Valley. He has also been interviewed by Forbes Japan and BusinessWeek plus has appeared on numerous podcasts. Jorden is Chairman of the Board for the World Business Angels Investment Forum (WBAF) Silicon Valley Office, a partner to the G20 on financial inclusion, with a mandate for increasing diversity and sustainability.
B Capital Group
Prior to M12, Rashmi was an Investment Director with Intel Capital where she was involved in the firm’s investments in startups including MongoDB (Nasdaq: MDB), ForeScout (Nasdaq: FSCT), Maginatics (acq. by EMC), BlueData (acq. by HPE), among others. Rashmi held operating roles at high-growth startups such as BlueData (acq. by HPE) and Couchbase (Nasdaq: BASE) where she led global business development, product and marketing roles. She began her career in engineering and product roles at Oracle and GE Healthcare. She earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Mumbai in India.