Shardul Shah, partner at @indexventures , is behind some of the most important technology companies of the last decade, from @datadoghq to Wiz, behind the $32B acquisition.
In this episode with @startupgrinder , Shardul breaks down the mindset behind billion-dollar startups and the two questions every entrepreneur must answer before selling their company.
Watch the full episode, link in bio 👉 @divotpod
#venturecapital #founders #startups #indexventures #divotpodcast
New Divot episode is live with Shardul Shah, partner at @indexventures , early backer of @datadoghq and Wiz, behind the $32B acquisition.
In this conversation with @startupgrinder , Shardul talks about confidence with humility, why the best companies are bought and not sold, and what it takes to integrate heart and mind when facing an acquisition offer.
Watch the full episode, link in bio 👉 @divotpod
#venturecapital #founders #startups #indexventures #divotpodcast
Jean-Charles Samuelian-Werve’s grandparents arrived in France after fleeing the Armenian genocide. They rebuilt their lives from scratch, and ended up running small clothing shops in the south of France well into their late eighties. That spirit of creativity and resilience became the family inheritance.
When JC was nine years old, he sat down at a computer and had what he describes as a transformative experience:
“The idea that you have something in your mind, and then if you tell a machine, you can deliver it and show it to the world – that was a huge moment in my life.”
He built his first website as a child, started selling websites to clients at thirteen, and co-founded Expliseat at twenty-two, creating the world’s lightest aircraft seat.
But healthcare was the problem he couldn’t stop thinking about. When he was growing up in Marseille, JC’s parents were both psychiatrists. He had seen the dedication – as well as the broken tools – that defined the French healthcare system, and he dreamed of something better: something less reactive, more efficient, more humane.
In 2016, he and co-founder Charles Gorintin launched Alan, a global platform aiming to deliver end-to-end personalised healthcare for all. Today, the company covers millions of members across five markets and is valued at nearly $6 billion. It rises to the demands of consumers, who crave simpler and more seamless options for staying healthy, as well as the need to innovate as chronic disease and ageing populations strain healthcare systems worldwide.
Alan’s platform is one that’s both high-touch and high-tech, both preventive and highly personal. It’s a platform shift in care as consequential as the creation of hospitals in the 18th and 19th centuries, bringing healthcare to where people already are – on their phones, in their homes and at work.
“When you start seeing society as a global civilization, you start thinking a bit differently about what you want to build,” JC says.
Explore more founder perspectives at indexventures.com.
Julie Bornstein has loved fashion for as long as she can remember. On her first day of fifth grade, she spread her Gloria Vanderbilts on her bed and imagined someday running her own label. “My mom always joked that from the time I was two, I was picking out my own clothes,” she says.
Growing up in Syracuse, she spent every weekend at the local mall. Even then, she was frustrated by what she saw as the inefficiencies of traditional retail. “Maybe they have it in store, maybe they don’t; maybe it’s in your size, maybe it’s not,” she remembers thinking.
That instinct—to make shopping smarter, more efficient, and more personal—stayed with her. At Nordstrom, she helped invent ecommerce before most retailers even knew what it was. At Sephora, she helped turn a beloved retailer into a digital powerhouse. And at Stitch Fix, she got a crash course in building a consumer tech startup from the inside.
Today, she’s building something even bigger. Daydream is an AI-powered shopping platform that uses natural language and real-time inventory from thousands of brands to create a more innovative, more personal way to shop. In many ways, it's the culmination of a vision she’s been chasing for 25+ years.
“My career has always been focused on making shopping easier, smarter, better,” she says. “I see Daydream as an extension of everything I’ve done up to this point, including a lot of the things I wished we could do at Nordstrom back in the day. Now, the technology has finally caught up.”
Explore more founder perspectives at indexventures.com
When Aaron Katz was a boy, he would watch his dad put on a suit, grab his briefcase, and head out to sell Xerox machines. Sometimes, Katz would tag along. Sitting in his father’s office or roaming the halls of PARC, he was too young to appreciate the innovation unfolding around him, but the rhythm and opportunity of a life in business made a lasting impression.
“I could see the quality of life he provided for our family, the joy he brought home when he would close a deal, or he would get promoted, or somebody on his team would achieve something great,” Katz says. “I thought that seemed like a career worth pursuing.”
Years later, after a stint waiting tables in the wake of the dot-com crash, Katz found his way to Salesforce. Following in his dad’s footsteps, he spent more than a decade climbing the sales ladder, leading teams across APAC, Europe, and Latin America, and becoming one of Marc Benioff’s senior revenue leaders. That experience shaped his philosophy: customer-first, globally minded, and relentlessly outcomes-driven.
Today, Katz is co-founder and CEO of ClickHouse, one of the fastest-growing companies in tech. What began as a popular open-source project has become the real-time analytics engine behind organizations like Anthrophic, OpenAI, Tesla, Mercado Libre, Lyft, Netflix, and thousands more. For Katz, the highlight has been partnering with co-founders Alexey Milovidov and Yury Izrailevsky, and building a team around the traits he believes make people successful: drive, focus, accountability, a shared vision.
“When you meet their spouses and kids, and they say, ‘We have a better life as a result of this company, we bought a house we never thought we could afford, we’re living in a community we never thought would be possible, my spouse loves working at your company’—that’s incredibly rewarding.”
Vlad Tenev was five when he landed at JFK and stepped into a new world. “I remember being surrounded by all these tall buildings, in this magnificent city,” he says. “I had never seen anything like that.”
The only child of Bulgarian immigrants, he grew up under constant pressure to excel in school. After dreaming of becoming a mathematician, he dropped out of his PhD program when a call from his college buddy Baiju Bhatt changed everything. He fell in love with entrepreneurship, and together they founded Robinhood, changing finance as we know it.
Over the years, Robinhood has helped a generation of investors take control of their finances, becoming one of the defining companies of its era. In 2023, Tenev’s journey came full circle when he co-founded Harmonic, an AI platform working to build mathematical superintelligence.
It was that same love of math that he says first drew him to entrepreneurship:
“You can take what’s in your brain and turn it into a product. And if you’re lucky enough and good enough, that product can be used by tens of millions—maybe one day hundreds of millions, or billions of people.”
Read more about Vlad's journey at indexventures.com
From the moment we met Dylan Field, we knew he was special. Bright, curious, and passionate about building tools that lift up others, he had a vision for collaborative design long before the rest of the world caught on.
Over the past 13 years, we’ve had the privilege of watching that vision come to life through his team’s work at Figma, and the even greater privilege of walking the journey alongside Dylan.
Today’s IPO is a celebration of many things: product excellence, relentless execution, and a community-first mindset. But for us at Index, it’s also deeply personal. Over the years, Dylan has been an incredible supporter of the firm, a devoted partner to so many of our founders, and someone who knows every person here by name.
We’re over the moon for Dylan and grateful to be part of Figma’s story. Congrats to the team on an unforgettable chapter. We know the best is yet to come!
One of Chris Urmson’s earliest memories is being four years old, staying up late to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Columbia. As a kid, he spent countless hours building with Lego, devouring Robotech novels, and dreaming about life in the Star Wars universe.
That curiosity led him to Carnegie Mellon, where he worked on autonomous robots for extreme environments, before leading teams in the first three DARPA challenges, racing self-driving vehicles across the Mojave Desert and around a decommissioned Air Force base.
“The idea of racing robots at high speed across the desert just seemed like a neat, fun problem to solve,” he says. “But by the third challenge, it was clear this technology could have a huge impact on America’s roadways.”
Since then, Urmson’s calm, clearheaded leadership has made him a fixture in one of tech’s most unpredictable frontiers. After helping launch Google’s self-driving project (now Waymo), he co-founded Aurora, where his team is delivering the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly.
Data centers are more complex than most people realize, and that’s what makes them hard to optimize.
#phaidra #business #vc #venturecapital #startup #tech
