Manu Kumar

Dr. Manu Kumar is the founder and Chief Firestarter of K9 Ventures, the firm credited with coining the term 'pre-seed' and pioneering institutional pre-seed investing in Silicon Valley. A serial entrepreneur who bootstrapped his first company with $5,000 and sold it for $100M+ before age 25, Manu holds a PhD from Stanford and has backed companies like Lyft, Twilio, and Carta from their earliest days. He is also co-founder and CEO of HiHello, reimagining professional identity for the digital age.