Last week I reflected on my career. I’m thankful for so many people and opportunities I have received. I didn’t have a traditional path into venture. People often ask me how one gets into venture capital.

I’m sharing a long and detailed thread on how I became a VC from nothing https://twitter.com/atshruti/status/1331722912789774338

I immigrated from a very large city Mumbai to a small town in upstate NY, Poughkeepsie. I didn’t know anyone there (just some extended family). I needed money to go to college. Advice I got was to get skills that would make me employable so I taught myself to type & code.

I found work a computing lab at a local college, @Marist. (also at a department store) My work in the lab convinced them to accept me without SATs. Worked hard to graduate early to save cost of an extra year. I fit in piano and ballet tho! I graduated in recession of 2002.

Some professors (my clients at computing lab) took interest in me & employed me at @IBM so now at 19 I had a 40 hour job as an engineer while in college. I was recognized as one of the best QA testers. I was one of the rare hires during that recession for that i’m thankful.

I rose up the ranks @IBM. Managers, mentors recognized my efforts & hustle. Gave me the platform to learn biz communication, people, & writing skills. They sent me to many exec programs meant to groom ‘the rising stars’. As an immigrant getting this training was a dream.

I wanted to expand my tech skills so while working fulltime I decided to go to CS grad school @Columbia with focus on data & analytics. It was a golden opportunity to expand my network so I met everyone I could. Head of CS dept is a technical mentor. Met my startup cofounder here

Back at IBM I was working with some high profile teams & projects in the CEO office. @HarvardBiz has written case studies on these groups. The senior exec & the team who took a chance on me are still my friends @amyhermes from that team just invited me on panel @AWSreInvent

I wanted to start a company and go to business school. These friends, bosses, & mentors I had made over 10 years helped me achieve my dreams. They opened up their networks for me. I’ll be forever grateful. I wouldn’t have gotten into @ChicagoBooth without them.

At @ChicagoBooth I met my best friends and professors. Many of these professors are LPs in my funds. I’m especially grateful they had faith in me considering they meet 800+ students a year for last 25-30 years. https://www.chicagobooth.edu/magazine/shruti-gandhi-array-ventures

After my startup, I decided to reverse engineer VC. I worked at a few funds during business school. Created a thesis on big opportunities in Big Data, SaaS, and Cloud. I shared my thesis with VCs along with some good potential investments.

One of my professors advised me to join @KauffmanFellows and through that network I ended up as one of the founding investors of @SamsungNEXT Fund & only partners with many early exits to @Apple @SamsungUS @McGrawHillK12 I was lucky to join startups boards & learn from other VCs.

I started @arrayvc in 2015 with operating & VC experience. Many of my early investors were founders, bosses, professors who I had met over 15 years. Founders encouraged me to start Array bcz they like working with technical investor with engineering, operator, & VC experience.

Array invests first checks in enterprise deeptech companies and we add value on GTM which often means a good path to customers and customer development. Often founders have been amazed by our network and help. We are in it with you!

Now we are on our 2nd fund (3rd coming soon), 45 investments in companies like @productivai @MozartData @OpenpriseTech @blumira @Placer_ai @BureauOne_US @superindexing @SafeGraph @catchandrelease @UniformDev @AlmanacDocs @goodtimeio and many more!

We’ve had some good early exits as well @simility acq by @PayPal, @PassageAI acq by @servicenow, Hivy / @managedbyq by @WeWork https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1JH35Y

We are just getting started! Any founders starting enterprise companies should reach out to us. If you want to invest in Array then there might be an opportunity there as well!

I’ve had an exciting 2 decades across 3 different careers and can’t wait to build the next 15 years in venture! Ask me anything!