1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: I was talking to a friend at a party last weekend. He’s very experienced and successful serial entrepreneur. He has invested in an AI company that is doing very well. But this question of hiring AI talent is very serious right now. Let me ask you the geography question. What is your footprint? Where do you like to invest?

Ankit Jain: Before we get to that, let’s go back to the recruiting point because I think it’s a very important point. Valley folklore and reality has been that the best companies are built with the best people. If it’s okay with you, we can spend a couple of minutes on the recruiting aspect.

Sramana Mitra: Absolutely.

Ankit Jain: Having built a startup and having worked day-in and day-out to recruit a very good team, I know how hard that is. Most investors appreciate and respect founders who make that a big part of their job. One of the things that we recognize early at Gradient was how hard this is.

Given that Google is our sole limited partner, what is something that we can do to alleviate this? I think we’ve come up with something that is pretty special and pretty distinctive. We’ve set up a startup rotation program where senior engineers, product managers, and site reliability engineers at Google can take a technical sabbatical for up to a year, rotate into a fund, and work for our portfolio company. Google continues to compensate them. They get a refresher. Any IP or work product is owned by the portfolio company. It keeps all three parties aligned really well.

Sramana Mitra: Do they get any equity?

Ankit Jain: They’re continuing to be paid for and compensated by Google. We leave it to our startups to compensate them on an equity basis. We’re just getting this program off the ground. We’ve had one rotator out for the last six months or so. Now we just marketed this within Google. The first batch of rotators to a larger number of companies will be starting in the next couple of weeks.

Sramana Mitra: I like this. It’s very interesting. I was asking you the question on geography as a follow-up to this. Tell me more about the geographical footprint of your companies. Where do you like to invest? How does the recruiting question play into that geographical choice?

Ankit Jain: It’s interesting. Given how hot AI is, there have been certain centers of excellence around the world. We’re a relatively new fund. Publicly, just over eight months old. We started our initial batch of companies here in the Bay Area. We have two companies up in Seattle and one in Austin. We recently announced our first international investment in Toronto, Canada.

We’ve been pretty actively looking at all the centers of startup innovation in the US, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, and London. Over the coming years, we’ll grow beyond that. For now, it’s easier for us to have our seed investments closer to us. As we get to Series A and Series B, we can look for companies further along in other places whether it is Israel or different parts of India. I think there’re hotbeds of innovation all over the world. As we scale our operations, it’ll help us invest farther from us as well.

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ankit Jain of Gradient Ventures
1 2 3 4 5 6