In 2006 I met with Kittu Kolluri at NEA’s Sand Hill Road Office in Menlo Park. He had just joined the VC firm and I wanted  to find out how he made this transition from being an engineer to an investor. Around the time of the interview one of Kolluri’s portfolio company Teracent was acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount. Since then Kolluri has had quite a few successful exits for his portfolio companies.

In Part-2 of our interview Kolluri talks about  entrepreneurship and the books that helped and inspired him on. His advice to entrepreneurs is they first need to validate their idea with customers and then look to raise money. He shares an example of how they used this strategy to raise money for Neoteris, a startup that he headed after Healtheon

Kolluri  started his engineering career at SGI, and while there got to know Jim Clarke, who  co-founded Netscape and Healtheon. And in Michael Lewis’ bestseller The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story, which is about Clarke there was quite a bit about Kolluri and how he worked with Clarke.

Kolluri was one of the co-founders of Healtheon, a startup that wanted  to change the healthcare industry. Eventually Healtheon was acquired by WebMD. After Healtheon, Kolluri went to lead a networking startup called Neoteris that was acquired by Netscreen, which in turn was acquired by Juniper Networks.

LISTEN; Kittu Kolluri on Entrepreneurship and Investment Part-2

 

Kittu is a graduate of IIT, Madras and State University of New York, Buffalo.

Photo credit: NEA