
Sandhya Venkatachalam
As an Investor, Sandhya is passionate about helping founders transform industries through the use of AI/ML and other emerging technologies.
Previously, Sandhya was the founder and managing partner of Deep Ventures, a seed investment firm geared towards entrepreneurs tackling hard and unsolved challenges using AI/ML. She was an early investor in One Concern, LunchClub.ai, Helm.ai, Forethought.ai, Fireflies.ai and Intersect Labs. Prior to Deep Ventures, Sandhya was a general partner at Social Capital, where she was co-head of the growth fund and the lead for AI investments.
Before becoming a VC, Sandhya was both an entrepreneur and an executive. She has started and scaled new businesses from scratch; sold startups to large technology companies; and acquired startups on behalf of those companies.
Sandhya reported to the CEO as Head of Corporate Development and Vice President of Product at Skype, after its spinout from eBay. While there, she led the team that built an entirely new ad product business from pre-revenue to $100 million, which laid the foundation for the company’s planned IPO and eventual sale to Microsoft for $8.5 billion. She began her technology career as the first product manager at Andiamo Systems, a leading data center startup acquired by Cisco.
Sandhya holds an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and an A.B. in economics from Harvard University. In 2014, she was named a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and she sits on the Advisory Board for the WEF’s Future of the Internet Global Council.
-
7Continents traveled twice
-
Self-TaughtIn machine learning and violin
-
ObsessedWith “practical” nutrition and fitness