Manu Kumar

Website: http://twitter.com/ManuKumar
http://twitter.com/K9Ventures
http://k9ventures.com
Palo Alto, California, United States
Accredited investor
Member since July 15, 2011

About

Investor interests

Type of investor	Angel Seed Fund
Categories of interest	Business to Business (B2B) Consumer Internet (B2C) Electronics Mobile Search Software Software as a service (SaaS) Design Education Financial technology (FinTech) Real estate
Credentials	Accredited Investor, Qualified Purchaser

Activity

I am a(n):

Investor

If you're an entrepreneur or corporate innovator, why?

Wouldn't have it any other way.

My favorite startups:

Lytro, CrowdFlower, Twilio, DNAnexus, HighlightCam, CardMunch, Zimride, IndexTank, BackType, card.io, EasyESI, LucidChart, Baydin, Torbit

What's most frustrating and rewarding about entrepreneurship/innovation?

Frustrating: recruiting!
Rewarding: Everything.

What's the No. 1 mistake entrepreneurs/innovators make?

People.

What are the top three lessons you've learned as an entrepreneur?

1. It's about People, People, People.
2. At some point your company needs to make money. You can't live on dreams alone.
3. Life's too short to work with assholes.

Full bio

Manu is the Founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures - a seed stage micro-VC fund that provides funding and support for tech startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. He previously founded, grew, and sold two successful startups. He was the Founder, President and CEO of SneakerLabs, a company which developed software and services for web-based customer interaction. After the successful acquisition of SneakerLabs (March 2000), Manu served as the Vice-President of Interactive Technologies for E.piphany. He then served as the Chairman and CEO of iMeet, a provider of web-conferencing services. After the merger of iMeet with Boston-based Netspoke (August 2002), Manu served on the Board of Directors of Netspoke until its acquisition by Premiere Global Services (August 2005). He holds a Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering with University Honors and a Masters in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University; and a Ph.D. in Computer Science with a Distinction in Teaching from Stanford University. Manu has invested in several technology startups including Lytro, CrowdFlower, Twilio, DNAnexus, CardMunch (acquired by LinkedIn), Zimride, BackType (acquired by Twitter), IndexTank and others.