PALO ALTO, CA / ACCESSWIRE / April 7, 2023 / Carya Venture Partners, a $20 million micro venture capital fund started in April 2022 and focused on early stage, deep tech/AI, and B2B enterprise-focused startups, announces the creation of its unique Growth Advisory Board (GAB) of experienced entrepreneurs and industry executives from private and public companies, designed to be a 'guiding light' to its portfolio. To date, Carya has invested in more than 15 startups across the globe as per its thesis.
While overall early stage venture funding has taken a hit since 2021, the Carya team believes that historically the most successful startups have emerged when the economic conditions have been less than ideal.
"During the last recession from 2008 to 2010, Airbnb, Slack, Square and other unicorns of the last decade came to be. Sensible valuations and greater focus on fundamentals mean better-performing companies, healthier financials and burn ratios," said Sai Supriya Sharath, managing partner, Carya Ventures.
"Our team looks for founders with laser-focused vision in building disruptive technologies and startups with a strong technical moat. We are geography-agnostic and would love to support under-represented founders who have followed a unique path to get to where they are and have exhibited extraordinary persistence in the field of AI/deep tech," Sharath continued.
Carya GAB and Portfolio Companies
The Carya Ventures Growth Advisory Board along with the platform leg-up services will guide the startups to an accelerated path of progress: building strong market fit products; establishing a robust revenue moat; and thinking ahead of the curve in offering differentiated, progressive product roadmaps.
The Carya GAB consists of strong industry and market leaders playing the role of 'mentor' for the portfolio companies. The Carya Global Advisory Board includes:
Steven Chambers - Former President and CMO of Nuance, former CEO Jibo, former CMO Speechworks, former CMO & GM Polycom, and former Board Member LogMeIn, Steven's experience in startup development spans robotics, AI, machine learning, visual collaboration, and streaming media with a focus on speech-driven technologies at companies including Kasisto, CallMiner, and Silvertree.
Ram Gupta - Senior executive and independent board member, Ram has been part of teams that have created market capitalization of more than $15 billion at companies including PeopleSoft (acquired by Oracle) and WebMD. He has been part of three IPOs and 10 acquisitions. He has been the managing director of Nexus Venture Partners and previously was Chairman of the Board of Directors at Aryaka Networks. He currently serves on the boards of many successful startups including Postman, Joveo, Welkin Health and Simplilearn.
Jim Hermann - Athlete, entrepreneur and investor, Jim began his career as a football player for the Dallas Cowboys and started Found, Inc., a company that brought brick-and-mortar businesses online during the dot-com era (and was acquired for nine figures). Jim has continued to advise and direct consumer goods businesses, including Icon Health & Fitness (now iFIT) and tech investments through HGGC.
Becky Ploeger - Senior Executive and Global Head of Reservations and Customer Care at Hilton Hotels running more than 20 globally-deployed contact centers, Becky has built and led large customer care divisions for major retailers including Kohls, PetSmart, and USAA. She serves on the board of Customer Contact Week. In her commitment to extend technological innovations, tech transformation and best practices to customer care and procurement teams, she also champions a group of more than 100 senior executives who manage similar teams at different companies.
Gokul Rajaram - Investor, entrepreneur and product manager. With Facebook's acquisition of his NLP company Chai Labs, Gokul architected the Facebook ad strategy that was directly responsible for the extraordinary Facebook IPO. He has invested in (or advised) more than 125 startups, more than 40 of them with successful exits. He runs a growth stage fund and continues to serve on the boards of Coinbase, Pinterest and DoorDash.
Michael Simpson - An executive and C-suite coach, leadership and change consultant, facilitator and author, Mark is Managing Director, Executive Coaching for FranklinCovey. With Columbia University's Executive Coaching Certification and a master's degree in organizational behavior, Mike has been working with C-suite executives and executive teams across 40 countries to help clarify their vision, mission and values, strategic planning, goal design and execution, and in leading effective individual and organizational change. Mike has also held senior leadership roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and Ernst & Young (EY).
Wendi Sturgis - A technologist at heart with more than 25 years of experience in building, scaling companies and taking them through successful exits of more than $1 billion dollars (Yext, Scient and Right Media), Wendi currently is the CEO of Cleverbridge and serves as Board Member of the Container Store, Lyte, and Sabre Corp. She has held executive roles at Yahoo!, Oracle, and Gartner, leading large teams across operations and client management. She serves on the boards of multiple nonprofits including women's empowerment Step Up, and extensively works with her alma mater Georgia Tech (where she is on the executive board), supporting startup talent and tech founders.
Jithendra Vepa - A scientist with more than18 years of experience in speech recognition and deep learning technology, Jithendra has more than 40 international publications and many patents in voice AI and biomedical signal processing field. He currently serves as Chief Scientist at Observe.AI. Jithendra has built and led teams at Philips Research and Samsung, especially in automatic speech recognition (ASR) and text to speech (TTS) systems used in their widely-popular consumer products.
"The Carya GAB is exciting and different from what advisors do in other, much larger venture funds," said Gokul Rajaram, Growth Advisory Board member. "Here with the Carya portfolio companies, we get deeply involved and really help mold the product and the company structure. Meaningful impact in an early stage company is crucial to a strong foundation and a healthy growth spurt."
Carya's portfolio includes the following companies: AptEdge, Arc Technologies, Correcto., OptIQ.AI, Rupt (U.S.), CIPIO.ai, Q Blocks, Minerva CQ, Symtrain, Sanas.ai, Goodmeetings, NuMind, Martian, Hande, BiggerPicture, Humantic AI, RevSure.AI, Nektar, and Rocketlane.
"We get involved as much as our founders demand of us," said Sharath. "Our goal is to start journey mapping on Day One; actioning a clear path to product and customer success with the least amount of friction, while honing the access to additional capital from strategic investors as the startup grows and thrives."
"Unlike a templated platform approach of making introductions to generic support structures, our mentor-partner approach lets us contribute effectively and meaningfully to a startup's 'Zero to One' journey," Sharath continued.
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About Carya Venture Partners
Carya Venture Partners is a micro venture fund focused on early stage deep tech and AI startups. The LPs and GAB at Carya are experienced founders and leaders who understand what it means to build a business from the ground up. The $20 million fund has invested in more than 15 global startups since April 2022. The General Partners are Sharath Keshava Narayana, Andy Lee, Marty Sarim, Sai Supriya Sharath, and Andrés Pérez Soderi. For more information, visit www.carya.com.
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SOURCE: Carya Venture Partners
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