Chief Firestarter @ K9 Ventures
San Francisco Bay Area
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Manu Kumar’s Summary
Manu is the founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures, a "concept-stage" venture firm based in Palo Alto, CA, where he provides funding and support for concept stage and seed stage tech startups.
Manu previously founded, grew and sold two successful ventures. He was the Founder, President and CEO of SneakerLabs, Inc. - a company which developed software and services for web-based customer interaction. After the successful acquisition of SneakerLabs (~$100M), Manu served as the Vice-President of Interactive Technologies for E.piphany. He then served as the Chairman and CEO of iMeet, Inc. - a provider of web-conferencing services. After the merger of iMeet with Boston based Netspoke, Manu served on the Board of Directors of Netspoke until its acquisition by Premiere Global Services (~$23M).
Manu completed his Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a Masters degree in Software Engineering with a concentration in Business from Carnegie Mellon. He was awarded the Enterprise Award with Distinction in 1997 by the Tepper School of Business and is the recipient of Carnegie Mellon University's Recent Alumni Award for 2004 in recognition of exceptional achievement during the first 10 years of graduating from the university. Manu holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (HCI) with a Distinction in Teaching from Stanford University. His dissertation research explored how gaze information can effectively be used as an augmented input. In addition to the Ph.D., Manu also has a Master's in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Manu is a former member of the Board of Directors of the Carnegie Mellon Alumni Association, founder of the Pittsburgh Java Users Group (PittJUG), founder of the Pittsburgh Chapter of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs) and a charter member of TiE-Silicon Valley.
