Seshu Madhavapeddy | Spatial Wireless | Co-Founder & VP of Marketing

After 8 years at Nortel, I was recruited by Venu as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence to create a company in the fast growing wireless industry. Venu and Krishna met Pardeep Kohli who was coming out of Alcatel and convinced us to combine our efforts to form Spatial Wireless. During the incubation process at Austin Ventures, they helped crystallize our company strategy, hire the core team and perhaps most significantly, structure the technology licensing deal with Santera Systems, which made the company highly capital efficient. These decisions made during the incubation were some of the critical drivers of the success we enjoyed within 3 years of starting the company. Ben Scott joined the board as active Chairman during the seed stage and was also a major source of guidance throughout the lifecycle of the company.

After the sale of Spatial to Alcatel, I came back to work with them on my next startup and will be delighted to do it again in the future. 

Pardeep Kohli | Spatial Wireless | Co-Founder & CEO

Seshu and I were first-time entrepreneurs and Venu, Krishna and Ben helped us in every aspect of company development - people issues, board management, business development, customer negotiations and the exit process. Venu played the leadership role among the investor group, Ben was a terrific mentor and Krishna was a great help on many of the company building challenges. The three of them were a powerful team that made Spatial a huge success during some really difficult macroeconomic times.

After spending a couple of successful years growing the Spatial business within Alcatel, I was ready for my next startup. I ended up as CEO of Mavenir Systems – a company that had been originally seed funded by Venu, Krishna and Ben. It has been a great experience to work with them again to build another company – I would not have wanted it any other way.  

David Pietruszynski | Black Sand Technologies | Co-Founder and VP Engineering

Blacksand is the first startup I founded after 20 years of leading the development of cutting edge mixed signal semiconductors at companies like Bell Labs, Crystal Semiconductors and Silicon Labs. I view Krishna and Venu as quasi-founders of Blacksand because of their role in helping me realize my dream of building a company with a complementary team, attractive product strategy,  and a strong investment syndicate.

Over the course of 12 to 18 months, I met with Krishna and Venu on a weekly basis to evaluate over 25 different ideas using a rigorous and systematic process before we settled on the current one. They helped pull together the founding team comprising me, our CTO Susanne Paul and the VP of Marketing Jim Nohrden. Krishna went on numerous business development and customer visits all over the world that helped us validate and hone our product strategy. They introduced and helped recruit to the Board the ex-President of Nokia Americas (KP Wilska). Perhaps most significantly, they introduced our CEO John Diehl and our other investor North Bridge Venture Partners to us.

It is hard to imagine how Blacksand could have come into being without the leadership shown by Krishna and Venu. I will be unqualified in endorsing them for any technology entrepreneur, particularly a first time one here in Texas.

Stephan Godevais | Augmentix | CEO

Augmentix was my second successful experience as a CEO. Krishna convinced me to come out of self-imposed retirement to become CEO of Augmentix. He had played a significant role in helping the company build the management team by introducing the VP of Engineering and Operations, CFO, VP of Sales and VP of Marketing. Several years later, 4 of the 5 key executives are still in place. He was the most active board member and was engaged in the full spectrum of tactical to the most strategic issues faced by the company. He was keenly aware of the relevant technologies and market trends and his large contact base has been very useful in multiple product and business development situations.

Krishna helped recruit Joe Marengi to join the Board of Directors of Augmentix in 2007. I was always fond of the years Joe and I worked together at Dell and his relationships at the largest technology companies and many years in senior management have been particularly pivotal in helping us scale our business to the next stage of growth. His no-nonsense style particularly on sales and distribution issues have actively guided us while the company has grown to be one of the fastest growing players in its category.

Krishna and Joe brought complementary capabilities to help Augmentix build a large and successful business. For any entrepreneur looking to build a valuable technology company in Texas, this is the team you want on your side.

Roger Dorf | Navini Networks| CEO

Navini was my third venture backed company as the CEO and my second successful exit. The company had just gone through a tough recap financing and was making a fresh bet on the WiMAX standard. Venu and Ben personally introduced our CFO, VP of Operations and VP of Marketing to the company and helped me retain some of the key original members of the team during this transition. Venu was a leader on the board and one of the most active investor directors. He personally drove several financing decisions, introduced us to potential investors, and participated in management off-sites and exit discussions.

Ben and Venu understood the technology we were building and the challenges of growing a worldwide business. I would characterize them as tough, fair, very active and 100% behind you through the good and the bad times. While we had a very active investor syndicate, its hard to overstate the importance of having local investors who were active, helped build the team and participated in all aspects of the company's strategic and tactical decisions.

Craig Malloy | Lifesize | Founder & CEO

Lifesize was my second successful startup in the video communications space. As a successful entrepreneur, I am very well connected in venture capital circles and had a choice of investors to work with. I wanted to have a local investor and I chose to work with Venu. In addition to understanding the technology and the issues around building a business from scratch, Venu was incredibly well networked in this market and was keenly aware of local trends and issues. Being local, he was also an active participant in several detailed product and strategy sessions with my team and helped drive several key decisions at the company.

Venu introduced us to Joe Marengi who joined the Board of Lifesize in 2007. Joe's experience from Dell in scaling a large sales footprint was very influential on how we thought about our distribution channels, sales organization and compensation. In addition, Joe's relationships at the very top of several key industry players were invaluable to the company in establishing key strategic relationships.

After six years of working with Venu and building Lifesize from an idea into a large business, I am even more convinced that he is an ideal partner for anyone attempting to build a technology company in Texas.