Shruti Gandhi founded Array Ventures after her own startup, Pensieve, couldn't raise VC funding despite her Columbia and University of Chicago degrees. She reverse-engineered the VC world by volunteering at firms and making early investments acquired by Apple and Samsung, then launched her fund in 2015 to back AI and ML founders excluded from traditional networks.
Alright guys, when you think of venture capitalists, what do you think of? Well, they went to Stanford, they're engineers, they have big networks. What else? They wear Patagonia, they like kitesurfing, and they're typically old white male. Well, hi, I'm I'm Shruti Gandhi. I started Auroa Ventures. I went to a no-name school. I moved to this country without any network from India. And the whole reason I started Auroa Ventures was to invest in awesome founders that do deep— sorry, that— give me a big applause here. I need some energy. Thank you. I've never done this before, so please stay with me. So I invest in founders, awesome entrepreneurs who solve problems in AI, ML, and big data. So I want to step back and tell you how I did this. This is my dream come true. I don't usually talk to a lot of people. I talk to a lot of founders one-on-one. So again, I would love your cheers once in a while. I'm shameless. So let me tell you a story. In 2010, I decided to start a company. I was in Chicago. The company was called Pensieve. It was based on Harry Potter, where Dumbledore picks out his memory and puts it in a bowl called Pensieve, so Harry can look through his past. That's what my company did. It looked through your social past to help you make better connections in the future. Sounds like a good idea to me, right? We all face these problems, and I thought it was really important for someone to solve this. At the same time, a lot of founders were solving this problem, and they were raising a lot of money. I, on the other hand, with my co-founder, both of us technical, couldn't raise a penny. Mind you, I went to a top engineering school, Columbia, for my master's in computer science. That's where I met my co-founder, and I went to business school at UChicago. Again, my South Asian community would love these degrees and brands and so forth, but it wasn't relevant. VCs weren't biting it. I could not raise a penny, and I was frustrated. It cut deep. I took it very personally. So that is when I was drinking one day with my friends, Yeah, that's what we all do when we're all frustrated. So I was drinking one day with my friends, and I said, "Let's reverse engineer this VC thing. I'm going to figure out what do VCs look for in founders when they're investing in companies." Well, right? Like, what's the best way to tackle this? If you can't beat them, join them. So that's what I did. I went and basically worked for free for anyone who would to hire me in VC. I did research and thesis, all the stuff I could do to just kind of beg for a job. Someone hired me. And you know what? I was actually good at it. Early on, I raised— well, sorry, early on, I was able to invest in companies that were able to kind of get acquired by Apple, McGraw-Hill, Samsung, and some other companies are now still alive and raising Series D and so forth from SoftBank and other big funds. Yeah, so I was getting some validation there. The other thing I learned was, back to my company, was VCs love investing and creating patterns. As we all know, the pattern recognition that VCs talk about. I did not fit that pattern, is what I learned. And you know why? Because I did not look like what they look like. And that is when I decided, again, drinking with my friends, that I was gonna change and break that pattern. I'm gonna create a fund that invests in people like me, which is when in 2015, Array Ventures was born. And since then, I've invested in 15 companies. I'll be investing in 15 more, again, in the enterprise space, in AI, ML, big data space. So if you wanna raise money, please reach out to me on Twitter @shruti. Shameless, as I said. You learn the hard way. So that's when I decided to raise my fund. But now that's when it brings me to this, "How the fuck am I going to do this?" Sorry for the swear. So I had no clue. And investors in funds are not like investors in companies. They do not want to be found. There is no database. If there is a database, you pay a lot of money for it. I was not going to do that. I didn't have money. So that's when I said, "What am I going to do to make this work?" And I went back to my roots of just going out and reaching to as many people who could help me and had remotely anything to do with raising a fund. And you know what? When I reached out to them, they gave me their time and advice. And you know what? I didn't take that lightly. I thanked them. I thanked them with knowledge, network, insights, anything I could to really help them out. So that's when they noticed me. They believed in me. They introduced me to some of their other friends. And you know what? I think that was the beginning. People started to know my name. I started creating a reputation. They started saying that there's— they started believing in me because I was believing in myself. Isn't there a phrase that says that the universe conspires to those who dream? So that's what happened. When I put my intent out there, people started to help me out. And then, early enough, a lot of people started to express interest in investing in the fund. To take a step back, I still didn't know what I was doing, and so I was nervous, and I didn't know if I should even take them seriously. So I didn't. I continued what I knew how to do best at the time, which is go talk to more people, drink more coffee. I continued to do that for a while until one day, one day, I ran out of runway, and I said, "You know what? I have to test this. I have to see if people really are serious about what they say." So then I went to my lawyers, and I triggered an event when people who were expressing interest in me, I started to— I had kept them lukewarm. I started to send them paperwork. I said, "Guys, here it is. I'm ready to go." And most of them converted, to my surprise, delightful surprise. Again, and then not only did they convert, they actually brought their friends in. That's how investing works. When someone likes you, they want to talk to their friends about it, they want to talk at cocktail parties about it, and they invested in me. That is how Array Ventures was born. And I have to say that I'm still in shock that I'm here today sharing my story with all of you. Hopefully, it's inspiring. But if I were to give an advice to my younger self, I would say two things: be determined and don't stop dreaming. Thank you.
