Manu Kumar
Founder and Chief Firestarter @ K9 Ventures
Palo Alto, United States
Manu Kumar is a seed investor at K9 Ventures in Palo Alto focused on Software and Mobile. Manu Kumar is the Founder and Chief Firestarter of K9 Ventures, Co-Founder and CEO at HiHello, and the Co-founder, Investor, and Board Observer at Carta. He is also an Investor and Board Member of multiple companies.
- Total investments:
- 65
- Last investment:
- Lead investor:
- 12%
Last updated:
For AI agents: llms.txt
Industries Manu Kumar invests in
Stages Manu Kumar invests in
Countries Manu Kumar invests in
Contacts
| Type | Contact | Validation |
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| Work email | ||
| Personal email | ||
| Work phone | ||
| Personal phone | ||
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Investment Focus
Industry
- Software 15 (23%)
- Mobile 7 (11%)
- Enterprise Software 7 (11%)
- Artificial Intelligence 7 (11%)
- SaaS 6 (9%)
Stage
- Seed 24 (37%)
- Series A 16 (25%)
- Series B 8 (12%)
- Funding Round 4 (6%)
- Series C 3 (5%)
Investments
| Company | Description | Round | Links |
|---|---|---|---|
| Agenda Hero is a technology company that specializes in creating innovative solutions for managing schedules and appointments. With a focus on leveraging artificial intelligence, Agenda Hero offers a platform that allows users to convert unstructured text and images into calendar events. This service is designed to simplify the process ofscheduling by enabling users to quickly generate calendar entries from various forms of communication, including emails and social media posts. The platform supports integration with popular calendar services like Google Calendar, making it easier for users to organize their appointments and events efficiently. Agenda Hero aims to reduce the time and effort typically required for manual calendar management, providing a more streamlined and automated approach to scheduling. | $5.6M / Seed / Aug 21, 2025 | ||
| Gentrace is a test and production evaluation for companies building generative AI at scale that improves the quality, safety, and compliance of LLM outputs. Its end-to-end solution platform encompasses a purpose-built testing environment that models real-world applications and comprehensive analytics to assess AI model performance. | $8M / Series A / Dec 10, 2024 | ||
| Invisible AI is a next-generation computer vision company that offers a no-code, edge-based visual intelligence platform to improve quality, productivity, and safety in manufacturing industries. Its low-bandwidth and low-cost cameras, which can be deployed at each workstation tracks real-time human motion to help customers run accurate, reliable,and safe operations. Invisible AI helps ensure processes are done correctly and safely, every time. | $15M / Series A / Sep 28, 2022 | ||
| Pesto is the digitally native, authentically human workplace. In Pesto, teammates build avatars and then configure rooms in which they meet, hangout, play games, and more. | $5M / Seed / Feb 01, 2022 | ||
| Launched in 2018, Forethought is a generative AI for customer service automation to maximize efficiency and productivity. Forethought’s products enable seamless customer experiences by infusing generative AI, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), at each stage of the customer support journey: resolving common cases instantly, predicting andprioritizing cases, and assisting agents with relevant knowledge. | $65M / Series C / Dec 15, 2021 | ||
| Nexkey is changing the way people experience access to anything that used a key in the past. The company has developed technology that can turn any mechanical lock, whether in a door, gate, padlock, locker, and cabinet, into a cloud-connected lock, managed through a mobile device. | $6M / Convertible Note / Nov 05, 2021 | ||
| Everlaw is a legal technology company that provides a platform for document analysis to law firms, government, and corporations. It is a cloud-based litigation platform for corporate counsels, litigators, and government attorneys that enables teams to discover, reveal, and act on information to drive internal investigations and positively impactthe outcome of the litigation.The company combines speed, security, and ease-of-use into a comprehensive solution that unlocks the collaborative power of teams and allows them to investigate issues more thoroughly, uncover a truth more quickly, and present their findings more clearly.It was established in 2010 and is headquartered in Oakland, California. | $202M / Series D / Nov 02, 2021 | ||
| HiHello is a software company that builds next generation professional network that allows people to optimize their business relationships. | $7.5M / Series A / Jul 30, 2021 | ||
| Invisible AI is a next-generation computer vision company that offers a no-code, edge-based visual intelligence platform to improve quality, productivity, and safety in manufacturing industries. Its low-bandwidth and low-cost cameras, which can be deployed at each workstation tracks real-time human motion to help customers run accurate, reliable,and safe operations. Invisible AI helps ensure processes are done correctly and safely, every time. | $2.5M / Seed / Jul 14, 2021 | ||
| Launched in 2018, Forethought is a generative AI for customer service automation to maximize efficiency and productivity. Forethought’s products enable seamless customer experiences by infusing generative AI, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), at each stage of the customer support journey: resolving common cases instantly, predicting andprioritizing cases, and assisting agents with relevant knowledge. | $17M / Series B / Oct 28, 2020 | ||
| See all 65 investments → | |||
Co-Investors
About K9 Ventures
Funding and support for concept and seed stage startups.K9 Ventures is a true early stage venture fund that provides funding and support for concept-stage and seed-stage technology companies. We work with entrepreneurs, sometimes even before a company has been formed, to help evaluate, evolve and fund a company in its nascent stages. K9Ventures focuses on startups in the San Francisco Bay Area that have a strong entrepreneur/team, an idea that has a clear path to revenue, which can be capital efficient and where they can add value.
K9 Ventures Contacts
| Name | Phone | Socials | |
|---|---|---|---|
Braughm Ricke
CFO
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Manu Kumar
Founder and Chief Firestarter
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FAQ
What does Manu Kumar invest in?
Manu Kumar invests primarily in Software, Mobile and Enterprise Software startups, most often at Seed and Series A stage. Most of the 65 investments tracked by Shizune back companies in United States. The Investment Focus section breaks down every industry, stage and country in the portfolio.
How do I contact Manu Kumar?
Public channels for Manu Kumar include LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Facebook. For a verified work email and phone number, create a free Shizune account — contact data is searched across 20+ sources and validated before delivery, so your outreach lands in the right inbox.
When did Manu Kumar last invest?
The most recent investment recorded for Manu Kumar closed in Aug 2025. Shizune tracks 65 investments in total for this profile, including round sizes, stages and portfolio companies, all sourced from confirmed public funding rounds and refreshed monthly.
Is Shizune's investor data accurate?
Yes — every stat on this profile is calculated from confirmed public funding rounds monitored across hundreds of sources since 2020. This profile was last refreshed in Aug 2026 and is updated monthly. Spotted something off? Use the “Suggest an edit” link near the top of the page.
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