SIERRA Ventures

SIERRA partner Vignesh Ravikumar is in Pitchbook discussing the current fundraising landscape. Article takeaways: - The venture capital landscape is stabilizing, with more balance between startups and investors, driven by AI investment and falling interest rates. - While it seems VCs still maintain some control, startups are seeing more capital flow, particularly in AI, leading to more even dealmaking. - Despite this, valuations are cautious, and the market is pushing for leaner, disciplined growth focusing on fundamentals.

Looking back at Elevate 2024, we’re still buzzing with excitement after hosting our first annual customer and partner conference last week. We had such an incredible group of attendees in Scottsdale, and we’re already reflecting on all the valuable insights shared. Through great conversations and tailored workshops, we got to dive deeper into our customers’ vision and challenges. We’re leaving even more inspired to keep pushing boundaries and solving real-world problems, from unleashing AI’s full power at the edge to supporting our customers every step of the way on their IT transformation journey. Alex Septoff, our VP of Channels and Alliances, shares the same sentiment from a partner’s perspective: “There’s so much opportunity for partners of all kinds to come together and solve enterprise challenges. One size does not fit all — which is why it’s great to bring together experts from hardware, hyperscalers, integrators, and more. By collaborating and staying focused on delivering real outcomes, we’ll continue to succeed alongside our customers.” Thank you to everyone who joined us and made Elevate 2024 a success. We can’t wait for the next one! #Kubernetes #KubernetesManagement #Elevate2024

I’ll be speaking at Innovation Day, hosted by Connect, on September 24th at Petco Park. As a former San Diego resident and UC San Diego graduate, I am excited to continue to be involved with the incredible innovation ecosystem in SD. I look forward to connecting with other UCSD Alumni who are building and investing in San Diego. Thanks, Mike Krenn, for building such a great network and for the enormous picture of my face ;) #IDSD24

After a refreshing summer break, we are thrilled to announce Episode 10 of the UNPAK3D Podcast is now live! 🎙️ In this episode, Arvind Ayyala and I sit down with Shyam R., a seasoned entrepreneur and the founder who successfully sold his previous company, Punchh, for an impressive $500M. 🚀 Join us as we delve into Shyam's fascinating journey from trading to entrepreneurship, where he reveals the intricacies of bootstrapping Punchh during its initial 3-4 years. 💼 Discover how Shyam's strategic focus on PLG and ROI paved the way for Punchh's remarkable growth, emphasizing the importance of customer alignment as the cornerstone for sustained expansion. 📈 We also explore the nuances of navigating M&A, a trending topic that promises to shape numerous boardroom discussions in the coming year. 🤝 Tune in, subscribe, and share this insightful episode on your preferred podcast platforms! 🎧 #UNPAK3DPodcast #Entrepreneurship #BusinessGrowth #MandA #PodcastEpisode10 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g7RNwiXy Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gm98Bj3k Substack: https://lnkd.in/gzR3YcNP

Last week I spent 3 days at the 10th Airflow Summit and a 1/2 day at the Astronomer Customer Summit in SF. WOW ! What energy around the announcement of Apache Airflow Version 3 by Astronomer CSO Vikram Koka > Run Anywhere (Remote and edge execution) >Run Anytime (Event Driven/ Gen AI Inference Driven) > Run in any language (Beyond Python support for Java, Typescript etc) Its so exciting to see the OSS project surge ahead with global innovation and nearing 3000 committers. Astronomer is committed to a thriving open Airflow community and it was on full display with great talks by Google Amazon Web Services (AWS) and our other partners. It was great to hang out with the guy that started it all Maxime Beauchemin and the OG's of Apache Airflow Ash Berlin-Taylor Kaxil Naik Great meeting customers / prospects with the all-star Astronomer team Andy Byron ..thanks for your leadership of this rocket company (no pun intended :-)), Leo Zheng Pete DeJoy Bhanu Sareddy Viraj Parekh Mike Haas Christopher Lefelhocz Vishwas Raman..great conversations !! And had a blast in a great panel discussion with my dear friends / BOD members Scott Yara Sutter Hill Ventures and George Mathew Insight Partners. Can't wait for next year !! SIERRA Ventures

Last night we had founders and investors join us for happy hour at SIERRA HQ. Fun to connect early-stage founders we have known for 20+ years with founders we are meeting in person for the first time. Thanks everyone for joining, especially the out-of-towners!

Last night we had founders and investors join us for happy hour at SIERRA HQ. Fun to connect early-stage founders we have known for 20+ years with founders we are meeting in person for the first time. Thanks everyone for joining, especially the out-of-towners!

Last week, we announced our investment in Inventive AI, read more about why we invested: The Request for Proposal (RFP) process is essential but often labor-intensive and inefficient. Dhiren Bhatia, CEO of Inventive AI, encountered these challenges firsthand at his previous startup, Viewics, which he sold to Roche. His experiences inspired the creation of Inventive AI, a platform designed to streamline RFP workflows using AI. Inventive AI’s co-founders include AI experts Gaurav Nemade, a former Product Manager at Google Brain’s Project LaMDA, and Vishakh Hegde, a Stanford AI researcher. Both have a deep understanding of the technical challenges in solving these problems and the ability to deliver results with incredible accuracy, enabling them to stand out from the competition. Inventive AI automates the drafting and management work traditionally required in the RFP and security questionnaire process. The platform significantly reduces manual effort and ensures consistent and accurate responses by quickly generating initial drafts from a company’s existing knowledge base. We believe Inventive AI has an opportunity to redefine how businesses handle this important business process. We are impressed by the strong early response from customers and are excited to support the team on their journey. Read more about why we invested and this incredible team. https://lnkd.in/g5QBdTe2

Founders, how did you identify the market opportunity? Last month, we talked to Hu Liang, the CEO and Founder of Omniex Holdings, Inc. (which was acquired by Gemini). Omniex was an institutional operating platform for investment managers, and active traders focused on crypto assets. It was the first large-scale institutional platform that provided a complete end-to-end solution designed and built by financial service technologists. Omniex was acquired by Gemini in 2022. Hu started his career as a software engineer and then spent ten years at State Street before founding Omniex. In this interview, we talk to Hu about entrepreneurship, the future of blockchain and crypto, and more. His advice is for founders to focus on the problem in the market more so than the technology. Check out this clip; the entire podcast link is in the first comment. #founder #cypto #bitcoin #leadership #gemini #analytics #financial #etf #FTX

Last night, SIERRA hosted another Engineering and Product Leaders (EPL) dinner, which brought together technologists and product leaders from some of today's fastest-growing companies. Our EPL Council was created to foster connections among these leaders, expand the community, and promote shared learning and collaboration. We look forward to our next events this fall, including our Annual CXO Summit. Check out the link in the comments to learn more about our EPL Council.