372: Bain Capital Ventures Managing Director Matt Harris analyzes how the FinTech competitive landscape has dramatically shifted over his career, from the domination of large financial institutions, which grew ever larger through mergers and acquisitions to the emergence of startups. We also discuss Matt’s interest in real estate tech and InsurTech, his views on Bitcoin and blockchain, what he looks for when making investing decisions, among other topics.
Matt is a Managing Director at Bain Capital Ventures, the VC division of Bain Capital with $60 billion of assets under management. For most of Matt’s career, he has been focused on financial technology, and he was most recently ranked number three among the FinTech Finance 40. At Bain Capital Ventures, Matt has invested in numerous FinTech companies, some of which he explores in the interview. Prior to joining BCV in 2012, Matt founded Village Ventures and spent 12 years leading the firm.
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370: John Chambers, the former CEO of Cisco, reflects on his 25 years at Cisco, from his greatest professional regret, to the key factors behind Cisco’s massively successful acquisition strategy, to the critical importance of culture. We also discussed his work with the leaders of France and India to digitize their countries, what he looks for when evaluating companies to invest in, insights from his new book, Connecting The Dots: Lessons For Leadership In A Startup World, among other topics.
Kai-Fu is a prominent venture capitalist, technology executive, artificial intelligence expert, and author of the new book, “AI Superpowers. China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.” Currently, Kai-Fu is the founding CEO of Sinovation Ventures, a Chinese venture capital firm with $2 billion under management, a third of which is in AI. He founded Sinovation Ventures after leading Google’s initial entry into China as the President of Google China. Prior to Google, he spent a number of years at Microsoft as a Corporate Vice President. While at Microsoft he established Microsoft Research Asia, which is widely considered one of the best computer science research labs in the world.
Kai-Fu began his career as an AI researcher, having obtained a Bachelors of Science in Computer Science from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon.
In this interview, Kai-Fu discusses his new book, “AI Superpowers,” in which he highlights the stunning, government-supported progress China’s technology sector has made in recent years. He goes on to argue that China is well positioned to surpass the US in AI prowess, and the reasons for that country’s gains. We also discuss the risk of job displacement, why US companies struggle to break into the Chinese market, and why the reverse is also true, what Sinovation Ventures looks for when identifying new opportunities, and a variety of other topics.
Mike is a General Partner at Index Ventures, where he helped establish the firm’s San Francisco office. As a Partner, Mike is responsible for investing in early-stage companies, with a focus on open-source and SaaS companies.
Prior to Index Ventures, Mike was the Chief Executive Officer of Joost. Before Joost, Mike held multiple executive positions at Cisco Systems, most recently as Senior Vice President and GM of the Routing and Service Provider Group, and before that, as the company’s first Chief Strategy Officer. Prior to Cisco, Mike worked as a Product Development Engineer at Hewlett-Packard.
Mike received his Bachelor of Science in Medical Engineering, his Master of Science in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, and his MBA from Stanford University.
Mike currently serves on the board of 16 public and private companies, including Fiat Chrysler.
Gary is an Operating Partner and part of the Resources Group at General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm that has over $20 billion dollars in assets under management. As an operating partner, Gary is responsible for providing strategic support and advice to the firm’s investment teams and portfolio companies with a focus on strategy and technology.
Before joining General Atlantic, Gary was the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at General Electric, where he led the mergers & acquisitions, sourcing, IT, operations, and quality teams. Prior to joining General Electric, Gary was a partner at the Boston Consulting Group.
Gary received both his Bachelor of Arts in Economics, as well as his MBA from Harvard University.
Gary currently serves on the boards of Citigroup, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Box, Mu Sigma, and Turbonomic, among other companies.
Among other topics, Barry discussed the following issues with Metis Strategy:
Barry is a Managing Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm he co-founded in 2000 which focuses on disruptive trends in the enterprise and consumer sectors. At Lightspeed, Barry focuses on analytic platforms, cloud, IoT, networking, and emerging infrastructure. Barry currently sits on the Board of Directors of a variety of companies including Avi Networks, MapR Technology, Wearable Intelligence, and Mosaixsoft.
Prior to founding Lightspeed Venture Partners, Barry was Director of Business Development at Cisco Systems, where he developed Cisco’s initial M&A program and led many of their early acquisitions and integrations.
Barry received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
This is the first episode of our “What is?” series, where we tackle topics of rising importance in technology and business, more generally speaking. We will tackle, “What is artificial intelligence?,” “What is Blockchain?,” “What is robotics?,” “What is 3d printing?,” and the like. Today, my question is: “What are microservices?” To answer that question, I will speak with a prominent venture capitalist who is investing in this space, and a leading founder/CEO of a business that focuses on microservices.
Matt Miller, Partner at Sequoia
Among other topics, Matt discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:
Matt is a partner at Sequoia focused on growth stage investments in technology companies. An avid nerd from an early age, Matt started building computers and writing code at 12 years old in his mother’s kitchen. He has worked as an entrepreneur, an advisor and now an investor. At Sequoia, Matt has worked closely with Barracuda Networks, Carbon Black, Confluent, Docker, Hirevue, Nimble Storage, Okta, Simplisafe and SkyHigh Networks. Prior to Sequoia, Matt worked at Goldman Sachs and graduated from Brigham Young University. In his spare time, Matt is wrangling two young kids with his wife and looking for people with whom he can practice his Swedish.
Jay Kreps, Co-Founder & CEO of Confluent
Among other topics, Jay discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:
Jay Kreps is the co-founder and CEO of Confluent, the company behind the popular Apache Kafka streaming platform. Prior to founding Confluent, he was the lead architect for data infrastructure at LinkedIn. He is among the original authors of several open source projects including Project Voldemort (a key-value store), Apache Kafka (a distributed streaming platform) and Apache Samza (a stream processing system).
Among other topics, Jeff discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:
Jeff Pashalides is the Head of Corporate at Sequoia Capital, a global venture capital firm. Jeff joined Sequoia in 2014 to establish, build, and lead Sequoia’s corporate practice. His team works closely with founders, investors, and C-level executives on a broad range of strategic projects.
Before joining Sequoia, Jeff led finance and corporate development at TrueCar and led Blackstone’s software as a service advisory practice.
Jeff has a computer science degree from Brown University.
Among other topics, Marina discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy:
Marina Levinson’s Biography
Marina is a partner at Benhamou Global Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley. She is also the founder and CEO of CIO Advisory Group, LLC which provides technology advice to CEOs, private equity firms, and startups. In addition to that work, Marina also serves on boards for several companies including Ellie Mae (a mortgage software provider). She also chairs CIO advisory boards at Aruba Networks (HP’s networking arm) and SnapLogic (a cloud services provider).
Before her current positions, Marina served as SVP and CIO of NetApp, where she was responsible for the global IT functions of the organization. Prior to that, she served as the CIO of Palm, Inc., the maker of the Palm Pilot, which was later sold to HP.
Marina is a highly awarded executive, who received the CIO 100 Award in 2001, 2004, and 2009-2011, as well as a Computerworld Premier 100 award in 2004. Marina received her Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the St. Petersburg Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics in Russia in 1979.
Asiff S. Hirji serves as a Partner at TPG Capital, L.P. Prior to this role, Asiff served as Chief Operating Officer of TD Ameritrade from July 2005 to October 2006. He served as the President of Client Group at TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation from October 2006 to April 1, 2007. He served as the Chief Operating Officer at TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation from August 8, 2005 to September 30, 2006 and Executive Vice President and Office of the Chief Executive. He also served as the Chief Operating Officer at Ameritrade from April 2003 to July 2005. He joined TD Ameritrade in April 2003 and served as the Chief Information Officer at Ameritrade from April 2003 to July 2005. At Ameritrade, he was responsible for developing and implementing all Information Technology initiatives, including business technology planning, application development, product development, information security as well as IT infrastructure and architecture.
Asiff served as a Founding Member and Partner at Mitchell Madison Group. He served as a Vice President of New York office at Bain & Company and a leader in their IT Strategy practice. From July 2002 to April 2003, he served as a Vice President and Partner of Bain & Company Inc. From July 2001 to June 2002, he served as the President at Meralix, Inc. He served as the President and Chief Technology Officer at Netfolio Inc.
He has been Deputy Chairman/Vice Chairman of Saxo Bank A/S since May 2012 and as its Director since December 14, 2011. He has been a Director at Advent Software, Inc. since September 9, 2011; Citrix Systems, Inc. since May 2006 and Primedia Inc. since July 13, 2011. He served as a Board Member of Netfolio Inc.
Asiff holds a B.S. in Computer Science from University of Calgary, Canada and an M.B.A. with honors from the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
