E56: Amit Garg (Managing Partner, Tau Ventures)

The Desi VC: Indian Venture Capital | Angel Investors | Startups | VC

Amit Garg is the Managing Partner at Tau Ventures, an AI-first VC fund in Palo Alto focused on three verticals that require deep expertise and are now being massively disrupted -- health, automation and enterprise.

Amit has been in Silicon Valley for 20 years — at Samsung NEXT Ventures where he seed-funded nuTonomy (self-driving cars, sold for $450M), cofounded a startup called HealthIQ (as of May 2019 a series D that has raised $120M and valued at $450M), at Norwest Ventures ($10B AUM), and doing product and analytics at Google. His academic training is BS in Computer Science and MS in Biomedical Informatics, both from Stanford, and MBA from Harvard. He speaks natively 3 languages, live carbon-neutral, a 70.3 Ironman finisher, and have built a hospital in rural India serving 100,000 people.

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In this episode we will cover:

1. Decisions that led to Amit becoming an VC (3:20)

2. What made Amit pursue Google instead of becoming a doctor post his Masters (6:11)

3. Why does Amit feel it’s easier today to join a startup than it was a decade ago (11:30)

4. Comparing Amit’s venture experience ten years ago to today (15:27)

5. What should founders ask themselves before imagining their cap-table (29:10)

6. LP construction based on the fund’s ‘personality’ (40:01)

7. How does Amit look at the healthcare sector and identify trends within digital health (43:28)

8. Why is AI in healthcare a huge focus for Tau Ventures (51:07)

9. Challenges that the healthcare industry today (56:45)

10. How does Amit manage his time? (1:01:05)