The Solo GP Journey & Navigating Hype Cycles - Sunil Nagaraj on the Venture Unlocked podcast

Sunil Nagaraj

This morning, the Venture Unlocked podcast with Samir Kaji interviewed Sunil Nagaraj to talk about a variety of subjects:

  • The major left-turn in Sunil’s career all based on a single comment from his internship at Microsoft (2:30)

  • Sunil’s own entrepreneurial journey founding an online dating company, triangulating on who you really are by looking at what you do online (3:40)

  • Why Sunil left Bessemer Venture Partners after 6 years (and the real reason anyone anywhere starts anything) (5:00)

  • The “Solo GP” model of venture capital and its tradeoffs - for anyone thinking of starting a new firm (7:05)

  • The 2 HUGE mistakes Sunil made when pitching LPs for his first fund in 2017 (11:10)

  • The various types of LPs and how to “speak LP” (13:13)

  • What makes Ubiquity “nerdy and early” (17:00)

  • What is “software beyond the screen” (17:55)

  • Lessons from successful investments (19:30)

  • Lessons from investment failures (22:20)

  • Why deeptech startups don’t need more capital than mainstream tech startups (28:28)

  • How Sunil’s wife’s PhD dissertation on organizational over-reliance on risk frameworks impacts his investing (39:18)

  • The state of today’s VC market (41:15)

  • Sunil’s biggest career learning: authenticity matters (44:45)

Click below to listen to the latest episode of the Venture Unlocked podcast

Ubiquity Ventures — led by Sunil Nagaraj — is a seed-stage venture capital firm focused on startups building software that reaches into the real world. In a screen-obsessed world, we focus on "software beyond the screen" startups, which include technology companies that apply AI, software, and smart hardware to physical problems and systems that you can touch, hear, and feel.

If your startup fits this description, reach out to us.

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