Manu Kumar

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT MANU KUMAR

A geek/builder turned founder (7x) and investor, Manu is the founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures - a technology-focused micro-VC fund based in Palo Alto, California. K9 invests in companies at a \"Pre-Seed\" stage with teams of technical founders who are creating new technologies or opening new markets with a direct revenue model. K9 has invested at the seed/pre-seed stage in companies such as Lyft, Twilio, Auth0, Carta, LucidChart, Everlaw, Forethought, HiHello, and more.Manu is the co-founder and CEO of HiHello, the first professional presence platform for enterprises that transforms hard-to-capture, real-world human connections into a powerful marketing channel. Manu started HiHello with the belief that a company’s most valuable moments—introductions, conversations, and follow-ups—often remain invisible and untapped. HiHello bridges the gap between physical interactions and digital attribution, empowering marketing leaders to command their brand, unlock hidden reach, and prove the real business impact of their teams\' human interactions.Manu is the co-founder of Carta. Carta is the industry leader in helping companies and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. Manu came up with the idea for Carta in 2009 after making the first investment for K9 Ventures and ending up holding a paper stock certificate.Manu was previously the co-founder and CEO of SneakerLabs (acquired by Octane/E.piphany), CEO of iMeet (merged with Netspoke, acquired by Premiere Global Services), co-founder of CardMunch (acquired by LinkedIn), and a founding advisor to Lytro (acquired by Google).Manu holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science (HCI) with a distinction in teaching from Stanford University, a Masters in Software Engineering with a concentration in Business, and a Bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering with University Honors from Carnegie Mellon University.Manu’s interests focus on technology, entrepreneurship, teaching, building, writing. He has guest lectured in classes at Stanford and also been visiting faculty at Stanford teaching a class on Human-Computer Interaction in the Real World in the computer science department.Manu lives in Palo Alto, CA with his wife, two kids, and their family golden retriever 🦮.