Vinod Khosla is an Indian-American billionaire businessman and venture capitalist. He is a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. Khosla made his wealth from early venture capital investments in areas such as networking, software, and alternative energy technologies. He is considered one of the most successful and influential venture capitalists.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number of employees, annual revenue, scale of operations, etc. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are often from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services to customers in a multitude of markets and industries ranging from the internet to automation. With over $100 billion in capital at its onset, SoftBank's Vision Fund is the world's largest technology-focused venture capital fund. Fund investors included sovereign wealth funds from countries in the Middle East.
Christopher Sacca is an American venture investor, company advisor, entrepreneur, and lawyer. He is the proprietor of Lowercase Capital, a venture capital fund in the United States that has invested in seed and early-stage technology companies such as Twitter, Uber, Instagram, Twilio, and Kickstarter, investments that resulted in his placement as No. 2 on Forbes' Midas List: Top Tech Investors for 2017. Sacca held several positions at Google Inc., where he led the alternative access and wireless divisions and worked on mergers and acquisitions. Between 2015 and 2020, he appeared as a "Guest Shark" on ABC's Shark Tank. In early 2017, Sacca announced that he was retiring from venture investing. In 2021, Sacca announced that he was back into venture investing with a focus on Climate issues.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
Impact investing refers to investments "made into companies, organizations, and funds with the intention to generate a measurable, beneficial social or environmental impact alongside a financial return". At its core, impact investing is about an alignment of an investor's beliefs and values with the allocation of capital to address social and/or environmental issues.
Greycroft LP is an American venture capital firm. It manages over $2 billion in capital with investments in companies such as Bird, Bumble, HuffPost, Goop, Scopely, The RealReal, and Venmo. Greycroft was founded in 2006 by Alan Patricof, Dana Settle, and Ian Sigalow. The firm is headquartered in New York City and Los Angeles.
AngelList is an American software company for fundraising and connecting startups, angel investors, and limited partners. Founded in 2010, it started as an online introduction board for tech startups that needed seed funding. Since 2015, the site allows startups to raise money from angel investors free of charge. Created by serial entrepreneur Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi in 2010, Avlok Kohli has been leading AngelList as its CEO since 2019.
Brad Feld is an American entrepreneur, author, blogger, and venture capitalist at Foundry Group in Boulder, Colorado, a firm he started with partners Seth Levine, Ryan McIntyre, and Jason Mendelson.
Binny Bansal is an Indian billionaire Internet entrepreneur. As of February 2024, his net worth was estimated at US$1.4 billion. In 2007 he co-founded the e-commerce platform Flipkart. He was the chief operating officer until January 2016, when he was promoted to chief executive officer (CEO). In January 2017 he was promoted to group CEO, then resigned in November 2018 due to personal misconduct allegations of Flipkart. He is an anchor investor in the venture firm 021 Capital. In 2019, Bansal invested in the endowment fund of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi.
Aileen Lee is a U.S. venture capital angel investor and co-founder of Cowboy Ventures.
TiE Silicon Valley is the largest and founding chapter of the TiE brand, a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship. The chapter provides technology entrepreneurs with mentoring services, networking opportunities, startup-related education, funding, and incubating.
Vani Kola is an Indian venture capitalist. She is the founder and managing director of Kalaari Capital, an Indian early stage venture capital firm. She was listed as one of the most powerful women in Indian business by Fortune India in 2014.
Theresia Gouw is an entrepreneur and venture capital investor in the technology sector. She worked at Bain & Company, Release Software and Accel Partners before co-founding Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm, in 2014. Gouw was named one of the 40 most influential minds in tech by Time Magazine. and has been recognized seven times on the Forbes Midas List as one of the "world's smartest tech investors". According to Forbes, Gouw is the richest female venture capitalist, with a net worth of approximately $500 million, primarily due to her involvement with Accel (company)'s early investment in Facebook.
Sonia Bashir Kabir is the only female technology investor in Bangladesh focusing on tech startups in emerging markets of South Asia. She began her career as a tech corporate professional in Silicon Valley and her journey led her to become a technology entrepreneur, an angel investor and finally a licensed, Instituitonal Venture Capital Fund Manager.
Jennifer Fonstad is an American venture capital investor and entrepreneur. She is the managing partner and a co-founder of the Owl Capital Group, a venture firm based in Silicon Valley. Fonstad was Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) for 17 years. She is also co-founder of angel investing network Broadway Angels. Fonstad has been recognized as a top 100 tech investor on Forbes’ Midas List twice and was named 2016 Venture Capitalist of the Year by Deloitte. She is also a Founding Member of All Raise.
Cyan Banister is an American angel investor and entrepreneur. She is a partner at Long Journey Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund. She was an early investor in Uber, Niantic, Postmates, DeepMind, Carta, Thumbtack, Flexport, Affirm, and SpaceX, and co-founded Zivity, an adult-themed social networking site. Banister was the first woman investing partner at the venture capital Founders Fund, where she led seed and early-stage investments.
Skyroot Aerospace Private Limited is an Indian private aerospace manufacturer and commercial launch service provider headquartered in Hyderabad, Telangana. The company was founded by former engineers and scientists from ISRO. It aims to develop and launch its own series of small-lift launch vehicles especially crafted for the small satellite market.
Chiratae Ventures, is a technology venture capital firm focused on growth-stage startups in the Indian market. The venture firm was founded by Sudhir Sethi and T. C. M. Sundaram as the Indian arm of the global venture capital firm IDG Ventures in 2006. The firm manages total assets of over $775 million in over 85 investee companies. It is headquartered in Bangalore, with offices in Mumbai and New Delhi.
CIIE.CO is an Indian startup accelerator and incubator that supports early-stage startups located at IIM Ahmedabad in Ahmedabad, India. It was founded in 2002 to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in India. It is a Center of excellence set up at Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad with support from the Government of India's Department of Science and Technology and the Government of Gujarat.
