Sanjay Velappan

UC Berkeleys official startup accelerator. We help Cal entrepreneurs and transformational startups. Bring us your moonshot! Located on top of the tallest building in downtown Berkeley, we combine the consulting know-how of traditional accelerators with the vast resources of our research university. This robust partnership is coupled with SkyDeck’s unique mentorship program to create a powerful environment for your startup. Our mentors and our large network of investors connects you to the expertise and the capital you need to launch and grow your startup...to the moon.

Foundation Capital was founded in 1995. As an early-stage venture capital firm, our fintech, enterprise, and consumer investments have reinvented industries and defined new markets. For over a quarter of a century—through boom and bust, prosperity or calamity—Foundation Capital has endured, evolved, and thrived, with over $3B assets under management, 34 IPOs and ICOs, and 80+ acquisitions to our name. Building companies is in our bones. We back individuals who want to nudge the world ahead in some way, using a transformative business as their fulcrum. Great companies, like Apple or Amazon or Netflix, aren’t formed from code and corporate charters. They’re built on a foundation of dreams and desires; raised up through struggle and sacrifice. For such companies to succeed, the people who start and lead them have to want success badly. It has to come from the deepest part of them—a hunger to create something consequential, something lasting; a need to prove themselves, whether out of a sense of mission, or a yearning for significance, or a heart full for disobedience. We look for people who believe—even if they would never speak it out loud—that the purpose of life is to be briefly extraordinary. We think that since the beginning of invention, humanity has advanced because the remarkable have pushed us forward. Because select women and men of their times have dared to think different, to build it better, to do what’s never been done. Across the ages, we’ve had many names for these people. Today, at Foundation Capital: we call them founders.

Simon-Kucher is a global consultancy with more than 2,200 employees in 30+ countries. As a trusted commercial advisor focused on unlocking better growth, we combine deep consulting expertise, growth specialization, and technology to scale lasting impact. We optimize every lever of commercial strategy – product, pricing, innovation, marketing, and sales – based on what customers want and value. With over 40 years of monetization experience, we are recognized as the world’s leading commercial growth and pricing specialist. (Legal notice: https://www.simon-kucher.com/en/legal-notice) -- Terms of use: Simon-Kuchers official LinkedIn page is run by Simon-Kucher & Partners Strategy & Marketing Consultants (SK). This is a public forum and we welcome your comments, thoughts and insights. However, all posts are regularly monitored and SK will remove, hide and/or delete any that are found to be abusive or deemed inappropriate for this page for whatever reason, including content that is deemed none compliant with LinkedIn’s User Agreement (https://www.linkedin.com/legal/user-agreement). This includes the banning and reporting of users who are deemed to be non compliant with the above expectations of Simon-Kucher. All comments, visuals, links to other digital pages and other type of material posted by followers on this site ("User Content") do not necessarily reflect the opinions or values of SK, its employees, partners or affiliates. SK does not represent or warrant the accuracy of any statement or product claims made here, is not responsible for any User Content on this site and does not endorse any opinions expressed on this page.