Founder of U First Capital Sanjit Dang, also former Director of Investment at Intel Capital, has been investing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions since 2009.
He is constantly on the search for highly promising tech startups and has invested heavily on numerous businesses that saw successful completions, such as DocuSign, True Fit, Reflektion, Helpshift, and Enlighted.
His company, U First Capital, is a venture capital as a service (VCaaS) organisation that has been hugely successful in attracting imminent corporations to sign up with them since the beginning. Some of the corporations are Mastercard, DowDuPont, Hyperloop, FedEx Institute of Technology, and Omnicell.
Prior to founding his own business. Sanjit had been the Investment Director of Intel Capital for 9 years. Intel Capital is one of the most successful and active corporate venture units. Since 1991, it has invested more than US$12.4 billion in 1,554 companies in 57 countries.
At Intel Capital, Sanjit had an excellent track record of success. He drove 1 exit every year since 2014.
His collaboration with Intel goes way back to 2000, when he joined the organisation as a Senior Engineer and moved on to becoming a Managing Director in 2004. He was among the top 1% of employees in the organisation to be promoted to a top business leadership role.
During his tenure, he worked on Intel’s Big Data Analytics for in-house manufacturing and was responsible for operational support for a $2.5 billion business. As MD, he managed a global team for accounts worth $2Billion per year and drove 2 M&A deals worth around $3.3Billion and $4.9Billion.
Apart from all these, Sanjit is an accomplished writer and global speaker. He is also on the Advisory Council of UN’s World Artificial Intelligence Organization.
Some of the biggest takeaways that you can learn from Sanjit in this episode is how you, as a fortune 500 or as a non-software company, should be tapping into the specialized analytics company or how you should be tapping into the specialized smaller companies who can offer an analytics solution in your vertical.
How you could build your expertise and some of those data analytics or AI solutions in your organization and integrate them into your products and services. Over the next 10, 20 or 30 years, the one who survives will be the one who can adapt to these emerging technologies.
Sanjit also shares with us what is the thinking behind these collaborations that you need to have. Also, what is he already observing in the market?
Apart from all these, there are many thought-provoking aspects the interview touches upon:
- A formula for a successful startup.
- What are the ways Sanjit and his organization are helping corporations to invest well that you can also follow?
- How to evaluate AI startup capabilities?
- Why should startups be aware of credibility while fundraising?
- Future of AI and data revolution.
- Critical and deeper aspects of the global tech economy — investment and growth dynamics.
- Strategies for local and global market domination.
- How local companies from countries other than the US can move into global markets?
- Silicon Valley is not a place; it’s a mindset.
Don’t miss this episode if you want to get some insightful and cutting-edge updates on global emerging tech, investment, and business growth strategies.
More links about the guest
LinkedIn:
What is one book that he would gift to his younger self:
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18050143-zero-to-one
Organisation:
Interviews:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Xu-698hHZw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4SRfWTpp5E
- https://menafn.com/1099925371/Dr-Sanjit-Dang-of-U-First-Capital-discusses-Venture-Capital-as-a-Service-and-Coronavirus-impact-on-startups-on-The-Silicon-Dreams-hosted-by-RJ-Shara
In the News:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/rebeccafannin/2019/03/11/former-intel-capital-investor-spins-out-venture-as-a-service/#6781f41b6ff5
- https://venturebeat.com/2019/03/07/u-first-capital-will-invest-with-dowdupont-division-in-iot-and-ai/
- https://indicanews.com/2019/07/09/can-silicon-valley-create-jobs-in-modi-20-india/
Articles:
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/02/25/artificial-intelligence-in-humanoid-robots/#666190f224c7
- https://venturebeat.com/author/sanjit-dang-intel-capital/
- https://techcrunch.com/author/sanjit-dang/
- https://readwrite.com/author/sanjit-dang/
Publications:
Have a question for Sanjit and Jason? Leave your voice message here at: https://anchor.fm/analyticsshow/message