Interview #5 — Karthik Menta

Impact driven, family oriented, and happy

are three traits Karthik Menta, an MBA candidate at Cornell and partner at Dorm Room Fund uses to describe himself. I got a chance to learn more about his profile:

As someone who studied Biomedical Engineering, and then went on to do consulting and pursue their MBA, it seems like you’ve gone through a pretty drastic transition in your interests. Tell me about this change.

I pursued Biomedical Engineering because I wanted to build prosthetics for amputee veterans returning from the war in Iraq. But I didn’t really understand that I needed another 10 years of education in BME to even begin making a difference in people’s lives. So wanting to explore more paths and having an exposure to consulting through projects I did for Becton Dickinson in my senior year that I really enjoyed, I ended up going into consulting upon graduation.

So given this transition, where did your interest in venture capital stem from?

I became interested in venture capital not because it you could make financing decisions, but because I genuinely wanted to be around interesting and brilliant individuals — specifically founders. When I was at Accenture, I regularly made trips back to campus and one of my friends who was still in school introduced me to a student led incubator called Startup Shell. I quickly noticed that this community of people were uniquely different from any other group on campus I had been a part of or had known. These people were entrepreneurs — and i was excited by the fact that they took on any challenge, no matter how grand or how much they lacked in experience tackling that problem.

So I became more curious about tech, entrepreneurship, and the venture side of the ecosystem. It became clear that by working on the venture side I could continue to have a privileged connection to entrepreneurs — see a variety of problem spaces through their eyes and learn so so much without having to live the rough and tumble life just yet. I also enjoyed learning about how people invest, why people invest, the considered metrics and etc.

You mentioned that you were motivated to join Dorm Room Fund for the people. Tell me about how you’ve been able to leverage this network, and the accomplishment you’re most proud of through your involvement.

First and foremost, Dorm Room Fund is a fantastic organization, not only because it provides really great services to student entrepreneurs, but also because of the people that are part of it. Given that we’re all students as well, we empathize deeply with our peers, and have a conviction to leave our impact on the industry as a whole.

For example, some of my peers were sick and tired about the gender disparity within funding, so they started the Female Founders Track, or the Blueprint Project for underrepresented minorities. More than that, I also got experiences where I got to work with a partner from Yale’s Divinity school, which provided a completely fresh perspective than the typical views you get within tech.

In terms of something I’m personally proud of, is last summer when I got to organize the Female Founders Conference. We had about 80–90 undergraduates and young professionals attend, and got a TON of positive feedback from it. It was a conference that felt tight knit because it felt like you were at home — I remember a specific founder making a strong connection with a VC at Backstage capital through the conference, a connection he would not have made otherwise.

My other highlights have honestly just been being able to be in a position where I can help student founders succeed and excel and be connected to resources.

As someone with significant involvement and expertise in Blockchain, where do you see some promising applications of the technology?

I’m interested in gaming applications, which is the common sentiment across the industry, and how crypto can allow people to buy digital goods and transfer them across platforms. I’m actually not that interested in the applications, I’m more interested in learning about the incentive structures, what the product principles are going to look like, and what are the next generation adoption mechanism that we need to think about.

Now that you’re wrapping up your time at grad school in Cornell, I’m curious what next on the horizon for you?

I ultimately want to work at an organization that’s building something massive. Areas that really speak to me are healthcare, crypto, and marketplaces. That’s actually also where I’ve invested and where a lot of my portfolio companies are from as well. That being said, I’d love to be a product manager, make something really cool and really new.

After that, I definitely do want to start my own business, and then transition over to VC maybe 5–10 years down the line. One of the reasons I believe this is because I feel like you can be a better investor and supporter by going through the trials and tribulations and being an entrepreneur yourself.

What are some things you wish you had known coming out of your undergrad?

1. Be curiosity driven and try to get the largest amount of responsibility you can out of the gates of undergrad
2. Talk to as many people as you can that are above and are more senior than you. Ask them what really excites them and gets them out of bed in the morning
3. Talk to people in as many industries as you can to get exposed to the nuances of each industry. You want information ingestion from as many people opposed to purely reading articles online
4. You want to find a mentor, which is hard. There’s no such thing as a defined mentor-mentee relationship, but try to develop those relationships to your best extent
5. Read all the articles you can from First Round Review
6. Really identify the three core values that you seek to lead your life by
7. Try make a case every day for working with interesting people, maybe peers that are up to doing cool things. This will provide a lot of clarity and give you a “resume boost” which may help you down the line
8. Try not to be pigeonholed, always keep learning, always keep reading, and always keep meeting new people

Favorite newsletter that you’re subscribed to?

I really really like The Information! I also read blog posts by venture investors like Andrew Chen, and other people who are specific to industries that I follow.

Learn more about Karthik!