The Top 25: #20 Venkatesh Seetharam, Capital One
A software executive with more than 15 years of experience turned venture capitalist, Venkatesh Seetharam is a partner and vice-president at Capital One Growth Ventures, financial services firm Capital One’s corporate venturing subsidiary.
Unit head Jaidev Shergill, who nominated Seetharam said: “Venkatesh joined Capital One Growth Ventures two years ago from a background in engineering. Over the past two years, he has demonstrated a keen understanding of technology as it relates to relevancy to Capital One and has developed a deep network of entrepreneurs and VC.”
Over the past two years, Seetharam has led three investments in US-based data warehousing software provider Snowflake – a $105m series D round in September 2017, a $263m series E round in January 2018 and a $450m series F round in October 2018.
Shergill added: “He led our investment in Snowflake, one of the leading most exciting companies in Silicon Valley. Snowflake is also one of the largest positions in our portfolio.”
Seetharam said: “With Snowflake’s unique and forward-thinking data warehouse solution, Capital One and other large enterprises are equipped to deliver even better user experiences for customers.”
Apart from later-stage funding, Seetharam also led a $25m series A round for US-based database storage software developer Fauna in March 2018.
Seetharam has a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Bangalore University and before joining Capital One Growth Ventures he was a software engineer at various companies, such as educational materials producer Cengage Learning, internet company Yahoo and big software developer Hortonworks.
