Evaluating Never-Ending Innovation in Enterprise Stacks and Raising Three Funds as a Solo Female GP, with Shruti Gandhi of Array Ventures

The VITALIZE Podcast: Venture Capital | Startups | Angel Investing

Justin Gordon (@justingordon212) talks with Shruti Gandhi (@atShruti), founder and General Partner of Array Ventures, a venture capital firm that focuses on solving impactful problems in the world leveraging revolutionary technology. Often that means category-leading startups that take advantage of data, analytics, workflows, and new platforms to change the way an industry works. They invest in smart people with a bold mission who take big risks in large or new markets.

Shruti brings a strong mix of operating and investing experience. She spent her early career as a developer on mainframe security, collaboration tools, and data analytics. Post engineering, she was an early stage venture capital investor at True Ventures, Samsung Electronics, Lightbank, HighBAR Partners, and the i2A Fund. She is also professor in the Computer Science department at Columbia University.

Website: Array Ventures

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/shrutigandhi/

Twitter: @atShruti

Show Notes:

• Array Ventures’ investment focus
• How a failed company led Shruti to found Array Ventures and determine their thesis
• Raising a fund as a solo female GP back in 2015 and her early pitch to investors
• Investing in solutions that solve agitating pain points in enterprise tech stacks
• What founders can expect with Array on their cap table
• How Shruti’s extensive background impacts where she invests
• Signals that Shruti looks for to identify breakout companies at a very early stage, such as Placer.ai
• The complexities around being a solo GP
• How raising Fund III differed from the first two
• Growing the Array Ventures team after raising a $56M Fund III
• Array Ventures’ portfolio construction and ownership targets
• The impact Shruti has personally felt with the increasing number of women in VC
• How Shruti views trends and evaluates innovation in enterprise software
• Shruti’s unique view on remote work
• How Shruti manages her mental wellbeing
• Balancing the many stakeholders in VC

More about the show:

The Vitalize Podcast, a show by Vitalize Venture Capital (a seed-stage venture capital firm and pre-seed 400+ member angel community open to everyone), dives deep into the world of startup investing and the future of work.

Hosted by Justin Gordon, the Director of Marketing at Vitalize Venture Capital, The Vitalize Podcast includes two main series.

The Angel Investing series features interviews with a variety of angel investors and VCs around the world. The goal? To help develop the next generation of amazing investors.

The Future of Work series takes a look at the founders and investors shaping the new world of work, including insights from our team here at Vitalize Venture Capital.

More about us:

Vitalize Venture Capital was formed in 2017 as a $16M seed-stage venture fund and now includes both a fund as well as an angel investing community investing in the future of work. Vitalize has offices in Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

The Vitalize Team:

Gale - https://twitter.com/galeforceVC
Caroline - https://twitter.com/carolinecasson_
Justin - https://twitter.com/justingordon212

Vitalize Angels, our angel investing community open to everyone:
https://vitalize.vc/vitalizeangels/