Manu Kumar founded K9 Ventures in 2009 after selling two earlier companies and earning a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford, and the firm is widely credited with coining the term 'Pre-Seed' as its own distinct investment category. Kumar, who calls himself K9's 'Chief Firestarter,' invests 'frighteningly early' - often before a startup has a product, a team, or even a formal company - and by design makes just 4 to 6 investments a year rather than casting a wide net. That discipline made him the earliest investor in Twilio, years before its 2016 IPO, and an early backer of Lyft ahead of its 2019 public debut. K9 has kept its fund size deliberately tiny ever since, running one of the most concentrated portfolios of any firm on this page.
Twilio's 2016 IPO - Manu Kumar was Twilio's earliest investor, backing the company years before it became a public cloud communications giant