Sanjay Rao

Read our latest article on Creating an Ownership Culture. This piece dives into how fostering a sense of ownership among employees can lead to remarkable outcomes for both the team and the organization. Here at KKR we are committed to providing ownership to all employees in all new controlled deals, building on recent successes of our Broad-Based Ownership Program. Whether you're a leader seeking to enhance your company's culture or an employee interested in the dynamics of workplace engagement, this article offers valuable perspectives. 👉 Read article here: https://lnkd.in/ejVc2ffd You can download the full report here: https://lnkd.in/ee_vT2rs #Leadership #BusinessCulture #EmployeeEngagement #KKR

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Earlier this year, we surveyed our fellow Los Angeles-based GPs to get a pulse check on the LA venture ecosystem. Here’s what we found: 💗 Deal flow is healthy, and most LA venture investors (68%) are seeing the same or more deal flow YoY. ✈ LA investors are spending time in a variety of markets, with NYC, Austin, and SF following closely on LA’s heels. 🔍 Innovation is concentrated in AI and machine learning, space, and commerce. 💸 Funding is happening, but it’s barbell-shaped, with deals concentrated at the early and late stages. Funding post-Series A has been challenging. 🚩 LA is differentiated, but not without its challenges. Key difficulties include not attracting enough AI talent (despite having the largest number of engineers graduating from our region over any other in the United States); talent relocated to more tax-friendly or less expensive locations; and the great SoCal / NoCal divide 🙏 Thank you to all our many respondents! I’m so glad to be part of a venture ecosystem that includes great minds like Anna Barber, Brent Murri, W. Christine Choi, Sarah Tomolonius, Rob Smith, Win Chevapravatdumrong, John Tabis, Jill Royster, Jesse Draper, Ashley Balla, Britt Danneman, Tram Lai, Carmen Palafox, Elaine Russell, Deborah Benton Amanda Schutzbank, Brian Lee, Petra Griffith, Minnie Ingersoll, Shamin Walsh, Gabe Greenbaum...wow, this list could go on forever...plus too many other exceptional humans to name. You know who you are! Explore our findings more deeply with our survey dashboard: https://bit.ly/3JsaLaB

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Recently sat down with Tianyi (Tony) Sun, Director of CVC at GC International, shared a few key points on building and managing a CVC fund. How to decide the north star of the fund by balancing between strategic and financial. What to look for to build an ideal talent team. IC's role in decision-making and best practices. Just like any previous episodes, we touched on many aspects with this short recording. Drop me a line if you think I should elaborate on some of these. https://lnkd.in/g9Nj8s5W GC Ventures #corporateventurecapital #corporateinnovation

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Good article on drivers of VC secondary market with great insights from my partner Ravi.

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Series A or B wondering when to bring in a VP of Finance or CFO? It’s a crucial decision that can shape the future of your company. At this stage, financial leadership is not just about managing numbers but also scaling processes, securing funding, and driving strategic growth. My colleague Paul breaks down key signs that it’s time to hire and indicators for choosing between VP of Finance and a CFO #FinanceLeadership #CFO #StartupGrowth #SeriesA #SeriesB #NextGenLeadership

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Private capital can support the revitalization and reimagining of old infrastructure to make these growth-oriented assets more valuable from both an investment and impact perspective. Learn more with Head of Impact Investments David Helgerson: https://gag.gl/sfICNN

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Private capital can support the revitalization and reimagining of old infrastructure to make these growth-oriented assets more valuable from both an investment and impact perspective. Learn more with Head of Impact Investments David Helgerson: https://gag.gl/sfICNN

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In the season finale of Brex's Controllers Classified podcast, BCV partner Sarah Hinkfuss spoke with Erik Zhou to discuss the VC investment landscape and how BCV approaches due diligence for growth-stage companies. For founders, there are three things that are important to share with investors: 1. Your unit economics, or how you think about your business drivers. It’s by far the most important thing today and those inputs (e.g. customer cohort data, gross margin, sales and marketing costs) give you a complete picture of the business. 2. Your business model, or how you think about your future. It doesn’t have to be a huge, complicated spreadsheet. Rather, it’s an important instrument to show people how you think about the business. What is your view of the future and what do you believe are the most important drivers of the business? 3. Your memo, or your narrative. A popular format today is to tell your story in a memo, not a deck, and it’s great because the writing process forces more complete thoughts to give investors a full view of your business and vision.

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Co-Heads of Equity, Matt Nord and David Sambur, spoke to Bloomberg about how Apollo’s disciplined private equity strategy has fueled recent dealmaking and strong return of capital. Read more about our approach to sourcing and building stronger businesses: https://lnkd.in/gUwf5qze

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Two years ago, we launched KKR Ascendant, a strategy within KKR’s Americas Private Equity platform focused on investing in middle-market businesses. Today, we celebrated a major milestone: the final closing of the KKR Ascendant Fund. We see a significant and growing opportunity to use our leading platform and resources to help high-quality middle-market businesses grow, scale and create value for their customers and employees. One way we’re doing this: By supporting the implementation of employee ownership programs at every majority-owned company in which the fund invests. This strategy is based on the belief that employee engagement is a key driver in building stronger companies. To date, more than 50 KKR portfolio companies have awarded billions of dollars in equity to over 110,000 non-senior management employees. Ascendant has already invested in six leading North American companies, including Alchemer, 123Dentist, Industrial Physics, Potter Global Technologies, mdf commerce and Marmic Fire & Safety Co. – and we’re just getting started. Learn more: https://go.kkr.com/3Bg5JwX

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Big things on the horizon, we are motivated and blessed to be at the dawn of a new age for the internet. Read more about our journey below or listen to the podcast: https://lnkd.in/eJeNhvVa

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I'm excited to share our 7GC semi-annual report as we officially kick off the end of summer. We look to take a holistic approach of all that is current and being discussed across some of the most critical components of venture capital today including: - Generative AI ecosystem from public markets, to headcount, to company fundraising trends. - State of “Non-AI” venture and the legacy unicorn status-quo. - Venture returns on a TVPI and DPI basis today and where things continue to trend. - Current investment themes and where we are spending time looking to deploy capital today.

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IPO market insiders, while cautious, are optimistic that the current trickle of companies going public will pick up steam. I recently shared some additional thoughts on this trend with Crunchbase. https://lnkd.in/gh75AxcU #ipo #ai #startups

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I’m a strong believer in the idea that leading is largely about building empathy. The job isn’t just helping others understand the mission - it’s helping them complete the mission and building alignment through personal context. To take it a step further, you can’t be empathetic if you aren’t curious. Curiosity drives us to ask deeper questions - those questions build empathy and, then, we become more aligned.

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PE - Investing in AI Infrastructure KKR inks a $50 Billion strategic partnership to support AI Growth - data centers and power generation: - "Advancements in AI are fueling an unprecedented demand for data centers, but a limited availability of reliable power is impeding the strategic goals of the world’s largest technology companies, enterprises, and governments looking to deploy AI." - "U.S. data center demand is projected to nearly triple by 2030, driving over $1 trillion in investment." - "A single planned data center campus regularly exceeds 1 gigawatt (GW) of power demand and requires an investment of $15 billion or more across data center and power equipment." “Data center power demand is expected to grow by 160% by 20302, a demand that will go unmet without the right infrastructure in place, which is critical to boosting productivity, supporting electrification and helping countries create a competitive edge in AI.” - Joe Bae, Co-CEO, KKR Source: https://lnkd.in/espxbiqt --------- #ai #pe #privateequity

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ANNOUNCEMENT- I’m delighted to share that Asset Class has partnered with Palantir Technologies to bring AI to the Alternatives and Private Capital Markets. At Asset Class we will integrate the AIP platform and Foundry capabilities of Palantir with our Fund Operating System (Fund OS). We will work with the AIP Platform and Palantir's Foundry Ontology to support highly complex tasks / co-pilot features that will allow us to leverage the FULL dataset that comes with the Asset Class Platform. By linking EVERY step of the Investor and Fund journey on a SINGLE platform, we have a uniquely complete dataset that can inform our AI actions. Over time we will integrate this as part of our Asset Class Network. This will continue to ensure Asset Class is a far more powerful system than any other in the market. We are a platform - not just an app. In the near future, we will be an AI Enabled, Networked Platform I cannot wait to bring the power of AI to our platform to enable our clients to super-charge their investment in our platform. See announcement here: https://lnkd.in/eCSy5Tnu

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Access to scaling/ working capital for small to midsize businesses is difficult to come by. Pipe is changing that by embedding their financial solution into the current workflow of small/ midsize businesses. This is literally a game changer. See Luke Voiles' post and the Fintech Nexus article to learn more.

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I recently had the pleasure of speaking with and learning from several software execs from our portfolio companies and industry experts during Thoma Bravo's AI Summit in Miami. It was great to share our insights into trends and practices we see in our portfolio and how we manage opportunities and risks. At TB, we have a long history of guiding enterprise software companies through digital transformation, and we’re already navigating the transition driven by generative AI. Our focus is on managing this new innovation by absorbing the technology to bring meaningful benefits to our portfolio companies and indirectly to their customers. And it’s evolving fast! We see our portfolio companies today using gen AI in generally three ways: first, to create new products and provide customers with incremental use cases. Second, to defend against cyber attacks that have become much more sophisticated by bad actors. And third, as an enabler of talent to make business operations run more efficient and productive. In our view, AI presents a significant growth opportunity, but we also believe that to really maximize that potential, companies should carefully evaluate the risks and be thoughtful about governance, trust, security and data privacy. AI is poised to accelerate innovation and it’s hard to predict the full, transformative potential of AI, but we are confident that some of the advantages of incumbent knowledge and data will be key to unlocking its value.

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I’m excited to join a panel tomorrow at the AAAIM VC Summit 2024 at the MIT Tang Center. Our discussion, 'Navigating the Venture Terrain: Strategies from Allocators will dive deep into the complexities of venture capital allocation. Looking forward to a day of engaging dialogue and insights! #AAAIM #VentureCapital #InvestmentStrategies #VCsummit #EarlyStageVentureCapital

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