September 2023 - Something Ventured

What are the odds that 4 friends can start a VC firm, and still be firing on all cylinders years later? Hadley Harris, one of Eniac Ventures’ 4 co-founders has the answer.

Before co-founding Eniac, Hadley was as a developer and engineering team lead at Pegasystems, and later took on roles as a product manager at Microsoft and strategist at Samsung.

His time at Microsoft and Samsung taught Hadley one thing: Big companies were not for him.

So, Hadley joined a couple of talented AI founders out of MIT at Vlingo where he ran a several aspects of the business across product, strategy, and marketing until it was sold to Nuance for $225M. He rolled his experience building a successful startup into Thumb, where as CBO he helped the real-time recommendation app reach user engagement levels second only to Facebook before being acquired.

In this episode we discuss how he co-founded and built Eniac, and what he is seeing when it comes to the recently hot trend of investing in Artificial intelligence. Last, but not least, we discuss how to pronounce “Eniac”.

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Samir Kaji is the founder behind Allocate, a pioneering platform in the venture capital space. Samir has established himself as a key connector between venture capital firms and the “LPs” (Limited Partners) who invest in them: He is building Allocate to leverage his experience into a platform.

After observing inefficiencies in the venture capital market – between venture firms and the LPs that fund them – he was inspired him to create Allocate. Allocate is described as “a game-changing solution that empowers venture capital firms to streamline allocation processes, optimize portfolios, and make data-driven decisions.”

Samir’s position in the industry gives him a unique perspective. In this episode he parses what he sees from his vantage point, as the VC market undergoes upheaval at the same time one of the most exciting technologies (“AI”) in 20 years emerges.

He also gives us a post-mortem on the turmoil that rocked SVB and First Republic Bank. Here he brings unique insight, given his years spent in venture banking working at SVB and First Republic Bank where he closely worked with and advised over 700 venture capital and private equity firms. .
Samir is also an active writer on venture capital and is the host of a top venture podcast Venture Unlocked.

Join us in exploring Samir Kaji’s journey and the transformative impact he hopes to have with Allocate on the world of venture capital.

https://www.allocate.co/

Samir on Twitter

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