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Undaunted on the path to extraordinary outcomes.
United States
Joined February 2009
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IVP retweeted
My first We The Builders conversation with @someshdash is now available.
Somesh has been investing in startups for over 20 years @IVP where he is a General Partner. IVP is one of the most prominent venture firms in growth stage investing founded in 1980. In the last almost five decades, they have invested in over 400 companies, with over 135 of them going public.
IVP is an investor in generational companies like @AnthropicA, @Uber, @Snap, @CrowdStrike, @RobinhoodApp, @figma, @discord, @coinbase to name a few.
I had a wide ranging conversation with Somesh about his thoughts on the craft of investing itself, immigration, IVP’s firm structure and how the firm works, his role as a leader in the firm now, thoughts on the unprecedented era of AI and how he thinks about investing in this era and more.
TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:00:55 - What 20 Years in VC Teaches You About the Job
00:02:00 - Risk-Taking, Contrarianism, and Dealing with Failure
00:02:45 - The Importance of LP Relationships
00:03:30 - Building and Sustaining a Strong VC Partnership
00:06:05 - Index / Spray-and-Pray vs. High-Conviction Investing
00:08:10 - What Does "Contrarian" Mean at the Growth Stage?
00:11:25 - Investing in Twitter in 2009
00:13:00 - Early Bet on Snapchat in 2013
00:14:45 - How Growth Stage Investing Has Evolved at IVP
00:16:15 - Investing in Anthropic
00:17:55 - How IVP Adds Value
00:20:00 - Founder Mental Health & The VC as Counselor
00:21:15 - Customer Introductions & The Day-to-Day VC Grind
00:26:37 - The IVP Partnership Model & Shared Decision-Making
00:28:05 - Depth vs. Breadth of Networks & Being In-Person
00:29:40 - Cross-Pollination Across Sports, Culture, and other Industries
00:33:33 - Favorite Podcasts, Comedy
00:35:50 - Expanding into New Sectors: Healthcare, Defense Tech & Space
00:37:45 - The Resurgence of Hardware & Semiconductors (Seagate, LSI Logic)
00:41:05 - Silicon Valley, Immigration, and Global Talent
00:45:15 - The Immigrant DNA of Unicorn Founders
00:47:23 - Geopolitics, Soft Power, and Media Narratives
00:52:16 - Immigrant Values, Capitalism, and Democracy as a Startup
00:57:35 - Labor Market Matching and Skilled Immigration
01:02:42 - How IVP Selects 8–10 High-Conviction Investments a Year
01:05:05 - Capital Allocation Lessons from the Clean Tech Boom
01:06:40 - Hot Take: Why Traditional Software/SaaS is Making a Comeback
01:08:45 - VC Firm Governance: CEO Model vs. Pure Partnership Model
01:11:50 - Generational Transition & Internal Mentorship at IVP
01:13:55 - Navigating Market Cycles & Taking $4B in Liquidity in 2021
01:15:15 - How the Investment Committee Works at IVP
01:19:25 - Apprenticeship in Venture Capital & Key Industry Mentors
01:22:42 - Cooperation in VC
01:24:48 - Somesh's Media Diet and High-Signal Information Sources
01:27:25 - The Resurgence of Print Media & Top Book Recommendations
IVP retweeted
Wonderful has raised a $550M Series C at a $5 billion valuation.
This latest funding was led by @insightpartners, with @salesforce joining as new investors and @IndexVentures, @BessemerVP, @IVP, @VineVenturesLP, and @9yardscapital returning.
In 20 months since launch, we're in production with hundreds of agents, systems, and workflows across a dozen verticals in over 30 markets.
With this new capital, we’ll be overdelivering for our customers, hiring hundreds of cracked engineers, FDEs, and former founders, and expanding our product capabilities across the entire enterprise.
Stay tuned 👀
IVP retweeted
Big companies are blowing through AI budgets. CFOs are under pressure.
Pigment co-founder Eléonore Crespo wants to help.
"It's going to be a big topic for everyone, and it goes beyond just understanding your costs," she says.
Founded in Paris in 2019 by Crespo and her co-CEO Romain Niccoli, @gopigment builds AI agents to help finance teams break free from spreadsheets for their planning.
Anthropic, Coca-Cola, Notion, Uber and Unilever are all customers. And increasingly, they're turning to Pigment to manage runaway token and model spend.
On our new episode of The Upstarts Podcast, Crespo share how building in Paris helps Pigment compete at the AI talent "buffet"; how a culture of “unreasonable hospitality” helps it win, from cookies to late-night WhatsApp messages; and how careful communication can help a co-CEO setup actually work.
Plus, she shares her Upstart Moment: closing a key exec hire, with an in-person assist from the actor Tom Cruise.
This season is presented by @Rippling.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
02:18 What Pigment does, and who it helps
06:06 Seeing Google’s spreadsheet problem first-hand
10:05 Finding a co-founder, CIA style, and a product, Ferrari style
15:49 Cookies, WhatsApp and “unreasonable hospitality” as strategy
18:56 How to make startup co-CEOS work
24:00 Building in Paris versus the Bay Area’s talent "buffet”
30:11 How AI agents change CFO and analyst jobs
34:05 Bringing AI token spending under control
39:02 How Tom Cruise helped close Pigment’s CRO
IVP retweeted
Huge announcement today from @chainguard_dev. Chainguard launched Athena, a shared defense network for the AI era for open-source software security.
Athena is the first systematic response to the wave of vulnerabilities AI is uncovering at scale in the post-Mythos era.
Instead of find bug → disclose publicly → patch → hope people update, the coalition works like this: Pool the intelligence → Patch and fix under embargo → Neutralize at network level → Then disclose publicly
Athena is the clearinghouse and Chainguard provides the vulnerability remediation and continuous reconciliation. Founding members include: BNY, Cisco, Cloudflare, Corridor, DepthFirst, Docker, JPMorgan Chase, Kyndryl, LTIMindtree, and PwC.
More here: chainguard.dev/athena
Introducing Athena: the industry coalition to protect open source software from AI attacks.
Athena is operational today. More than two dozen members. It's processed 20,000+ findings and generated 2,000+ patches across 500+ open source projects.
Join us: chainguard.dev/athena
IVP retweeted
Introducing Athena: the industry coalition to protect open source software from AI attacks.
Athena is operational today. More than two dozen members. It's processed 20,000+ findings and generated 2,000+ patches across 500+ open source projects.
Join us: chainguard.dev/athena
Music creation is becoming one of the most human things we do. Today we announced our investment in @Suno's $400M Series D.
More from @Lucas_Shaw:
bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
IVP retweeted
Today marks the beginning of a new era.
Introducing: Cowboy Space Corporation.
We are building orbital infrastructure for the AI era: a fully integrated system of rockets and satellites designed to deliver high-performance compute and optical data transmission directly from Low Earth Orbit.
AI infrastructure is running into a physical constraint: power.
That’s what drew us to @CowboySpaceCorp. The company is solving that head-on by building a power grid in space. 🚀
More on why we're backing the Series B: ivp.com/content/the-sun-neve…
IVP retweeted
Been an interesting past few weeks -- there were 5 major supply chain attacks, but @chainguard_dev customers were protected from each one.
@lorenc_dan has been preparing for this. What he once called "a safe source for open source" is now a trust layer for the AI era. It's what we need as AI accelerates both the pace of software development and software supply chain attacks.
Chainguard is making its Libraries + Actions product free for the next 90 days @ chainguard.dev
IVP retweeted
@wonderful_ai 🤝 @McKinsey x @quantumblack
McKinsey turns AI ambition into strategy. Wonderful turns strategy into agents in production.
See how our new partnership helps enterprises get out of pilot purgatory:
mckinsey.com/capabilities/te…
IVP retweeted
Last month proved that your security is only as strong as your weakest dependency.
The attacks against Trivy, LiteLLM and axios showed that you can’t patch and scan your way out of a broken trust model.
We took an ad out in the @BostonGlobe to share our POV.
IVP retweeted
BREAKING: WHOOP RAISES $575M AT $10.1B VALUATION
I am pleased to announce that we’ve raised $575M at a $10.1B valuation to accelerate our mission of unlocking human performance and healthspan globally.
This round was led by Collaborative Fund with participation from 2PointZero Group, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), Mubadala Investment Company, Abbott, Mayo Clinic, Macquarie Capital, Glade Brook, B-Flexion, IVP, Foundry, Accomplice, Affinity Partners, Promus Ventures, and Bullhound Capital alongside a group of individual investors including Cristiano Ronaldo, LeBron James, Rory McIlroy, Virgil van Dijk, and Mathieu van der Poel.
This investor group and this moment reflect a powerful evolution underway for Whoop and the broader healthcare market.
Whoop was born in performance - trusted by the best athletes in the world to train, recover, and compete at the highest level. That foundation remains core to who we are. You see that in the iconic athlete investors joining this round.
But it also represents our push into broader health.
In the past 12 months, WHOOP has received medical clearances, launched blood testing, and created a platform that has saved lives. Abbott and Mayo Clinic - two of the most respected and influential institutions in global healthcare - are now investors in Whoop. These are organizations that have shaped modern medicine. Their decision to partner with us is a clear validation of where our technology is headed.
Healthcare systems around the world are reactive. For too long, they have waited for people to get sick, then intervene. Chronic disease is rising and costs continue to climb.
At Whoop, we believe the future looks fundamentally different. We are building the most powerful, personal, preventive health platform in the world - powered by continuous biometric data, advanced analytics, and AI to help people understand their bodies and improve their health in real time.
I am grateful to our team, our members, and our partners for believing in this vision. I’ve been building this company for 14 years and I’ve never been more excited for the future.
IVP retweeted
What’s it like building at Abridge? “It feels like the beginning of the Internet… It’s love for software that I have never seen.”
Watch to see what our builders say about working at Abridge.
We’re fortunate to be backed by investors who share our vision, including @a16z @eladgil @khoslaventures @NVIDIA Ventures @IVP @SVAngel @lightspeedvp @Redpoint @sparkcapital @BessemerVP @usv
We’re hiring in SF!
IVP retweeted
We’ve raised our $150 Million Series B round at a $2 Billion valuation.
Our investors @insightpartners , @IndexVentures , @IVP, @BessemerVP, and @VineVenturesLP are all tripling down on their conviction in Wonderful’s platform and hyper-local operating model, as we continue deploying production-grade agents across our growing customer base in 30+ countries.
And, we’re hiring globally (a lot): Wonderful.ai
IVP retweeted
Had a great chat with @hwchase17 at @LangChain's first all-company offsite. We got into something I think every scaling founder needs to hear.
An astute LangChain employee asked: “Isn't shipping quickly at odds with craftsmanship and product quality?” My counterintuitive answer: No—speed to customer hands improves quality.
The sooner users touch your product, the sooner you know if you're building the right thing and the sooner you find bugs. Quality comes from contact with reality, not longer internal bake times.
Playing it safe can actually kill product quality at growing companies. Teams keep iterating on fixes and small features internally, but nothing ships for months and the really big, new roadmap item gets bogged down in red tape and death-by-committee.
We saw this firsthand at @coinbase . After the 2017 crypto boom, product velocity stalled in 2018 as headcount grew quickly and the company focused on infrastructure (eg, keeping the site up and ready for scale) and navigating regulatory ambiguity (eg, avoiding all risk). It took @brian_armstrong and @balajis cutting through the red tape to get back to shipping. Whenever they were told something would take 6 months or “is not possible” they kept asking “Why?” until they found the root cause.
Turned out customers cared more about having new tokens to trade than the 6th nine of uptime.
For Series B founders, the #1 thing to protect as you scale is product velocity on legit new product (not just iterating existing features). Growth brings bureaucracy. Your job is to cut through it.
IVP retweeted
Presentations are one of the most important ways we communicate at work; they also take an inordinate amount of time and resources to create. (Personal note: I have gotten so bad and slow at the process of making slide presentations and memos over the years as my i-banking skills fade into oblivion…) That’s why we at @IVP partnered with @GammaApp, which will help teams think more and format less.
@thisisgrantlee lived slide deck problems firsthand, watching great ideas get diluted by bad tools and slow builds in Google Slides. Rather than accept the friction as inevitable, @thisisgrantlee, @jamisonfox and @thatsjonsense decided to rebuild the workflow from the ground up with Gamma.
With Gamma’s AI presentation design tools, content is always the user’s primary focus. You can stop tinkering and spend more time making your thoughts more compelling. Just clear thinking turned into polished storytelling, every time. Slides? Document? PDF? Gorgeous website? Yes to all! Without any additional work.
Read more about our investment in @GammaApp here: ivp.com/content/gamma-busine…
Most slide decks slow teams down; @GammaApp does the opposite.
By removing the friction of formatting and putting ideas first, Gamma helps teams communicate clearly and move faster.
More about our investment in Gamma: ivp.com/content/gamma-busine…
