Kaushik Subramanian
Venture capitalist, product person
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About
Kaushik is a venture capitalist who invests primarily in product led technology businesses. Previously, he built products to several $B of scale at Stripe and Meta.At Stripe, Kaushik built a $XB profitable business in FX/Multicurrency, and led several product teams and initiatives across Stripe Connect, invoicing and monetization in EMEA. At Meta, he grew its ad network to a multi billion dollar business by changing the plumbing of the ad tech industry. He’s an established voice in tech, with thought leadership in forums such as the World Economic Forum and Facebook f8. He’s had a past life with McKinsey and L’Oreal.Some media coverage:
Product Summit Talk, 2020
Career Story on YourStory, 2020
Keynote at Facebook f8, 2019
Article on App Bidding in Digiday, 2019
Mobile World Congress Keynote, 2019
World Economic Forum, 2016Personal
The Hindu, 2021
Scroll.in, 2021
Inc42, 2020
Network Capital, 2019/20
Portfolio
I invest in teams that solve customer problems using technology and a pure product led approach. I don't usually invest in companies that have a logistics element or physical goods. This self selects me out of most deals, which allows me to be more focused on what I know best.
| Company | What it does | Lead Investor |
|---|---|---|
| Fermat Commerce | Infrastructure for Distributed commerce | Greylock, QED |
| Payflows | Treasury Management | Ribbit |
| Fampay | Banking for Gen Z | General Catalyst, Sequoia |
| Chronicle | Storytelling Tools | Accel |
| DeepOpinion | Cognitive AI process automation | Stride |
| Khyaal | Platform and banking for senior citizens | Blume |
| Locale | Control tower for ops teams | Chiratae |
| Threado | Command center for Community teams | Vertex |
| Insightly | Developer productivity | Together Fund |
I write about tech, careers, product management and in an earlier life, consumer goods. Here are some examples:
Talks:
Blume Ventures - How to build empowered product teams, 2022
Techstars Amsterdam/Stockholm - Crafting succesful products
Indian Silicon Valley - Navigating a career in tech, 2022
Startup Operator podcast, 2021
Short Reads (<2 mins):
How apps make money
Good product counsel vs Great product counsel
Good feedback vs bad feedback
The big shiny thing problem
How to have great meetings
How to drive influence without authority
On Metrics
Strategy vs narrative framing
How to scale when you're not a manager
Longer reads:
How to write a user manual for yourself
How to quit your job with grace
What its like to leave McKinsey