Having jointed Capital One Growth Ventures (C1GV) in 2015, investment principal Nathan Krishnamurthy, who is a GCV Rising Star for the second consecutive year, has been important in the firm’s development from inception.
Jaidev Shergill, C1GV’s head and member of the GCV Powerlist 2017, said: “Nathan has played an instrumental operational role in building C1GV from the ground up, leading the process of designing our operating policies, governance model, risk framework and investment process.
“He has become a thought leader in several industry verticals, including blockchain, business to business payments and rewards and loyalty schemes.”
Launched in 2014 as US-based bank Capital One bank’s corporate venture capital unit, C1GV largely focuses on investments in big data technologies, payments, security and fintech. With about 20 companies in its portfolio at present, the firm made four new investments in 2017.
In May, the CVC took part in a $15m round for cybersecurity specialist group Vera alongside Sutter Hill Ventures, Battery Ventures and others. That investment was quickly followed by a $33m series C round in Tel Aviv, Israel-based fraud prevention services provider Riskified, which was a co-investment made alongside Pitango Venture Capital, Qumra Capita, C4 Ventures, and Groupe Arnault.
C1GV subsequently chipped into a $60m C round for US-based startup ThoughtSpot, specialised in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven analytics for humans. Finally, in September, the CVC provided a $5m extension for cloud data storage technology developer Snowflake Computing, bringing the startup’s D round to a total $105m.
The year 2017 was therefore quite active year for C1GV. At the centre of its investment strategy is the idea of “trying to address the next five to eight years of financial services, and figure out exactly what technology is necessary to enable the sector to keep growing”, according to Krishnamurthy.
Looking back at his path within the firm, he said: “The reason I joined Capital One is because I think that in the finance world, we are one of the most forward-thinking banks. “Today, as we think about modern technology, we are one of the only banks moving entirely towards cloud computing, including for on-premise data centres, which are progressively being replaced by cloud-hosted ones. From an investment point of view, this opens up considerable opportunities and blue oceans of areas we can invest in.
“Being part of a CVC unit at a company that is going through that transition, and thereby having a very unique perspective into how other companies will move to the cloud alongside us, is fundamentally what is exciting about being part of Capital One for me.”
Having joined the firm in its very early stages in 2015, Krishnamurthy brought to the table five years of experience working in early-stage ventures, first as strategy manager within startup incubator Launch Collective, and later as associate within non-profit organisation Accion, which supports microfinance institutions striving to make financial services available for low-income clients.
Prior to that, the principal worked as an investment banking analyst at Merrill Lunch for two years, including during the recession period. It was after he completed an MBA at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 2015 that he finally moved to C1GV, following his growing wish to “work with enterprise technology companies.”
At C1GV, the principal executed most of the firm’s major transactions, such as its large investments in Riskified, ThoughtSpot, and Snowflake last year, as well as in New York-based business-to-business payment services provider Transactis in 2016, through a $30m multi-investor E round.
He also led a number of early-stage rounds, including a pre-product lead investment in fine-grain data access management group Cerebro, which was a deal that Krishnamurthy assesses as his “greatest success” at C1GV. He said: “It is a great success, because we identified a founding team that had never raised money before, backed it with a seed investment, and brought a number of leading VCs from Silicon Valley into the deal with us.
“The company has now gone on to have great success in raising additional capital, and in developing technology that’s really impactful and necessary for Capital One.” He added: “This is the very essence of what we are trying to accomplish at C1GV. Finding the next generation to develop technology for the cloud that is both money-making as a venture investment, and has a dramatic impact on the way we are able to deliver financial services to our customers.
“Data access management may not sound very sexy at first, but it is absolutely critical to doing big data in a regulated industry.”
In Krishnamurthy’s eyes, C1GV has now reached a stage of development comparable to a B-stage startup, and needs to use the framework it has built to keep up a good cadence of investment over the next few years, as well as maintain its support to existing portfolio companies.
Looking at the bigger picture of CVC, he added: “I think in CVC, it can be very easy to try and get transactions done, rather than trying to make good investments that are profitable and highly strategic to one’s corporation. One of my goals is to try and be as deliberate in saying no as I am in saying yes.” In a past life, Khrishnmaurthy used to be a professional chef working in Michelin-starred French gastronomic restaurant Bouley, based a few blocks away from Greenwich Village in south Manhattan. Asked why he had ever dropped out of that career path, he said: “It is a hard life that basically requires abandoning all friendships with people who live during the day and, frankly, from a professional point of view, there are a lot of people out there who devote their entire life to trying to be the best cook they can possibly be. I think without making that commitment, you simply cannot be the best at what you do.”