Satish Dharmaraj is an American entrepreneur, speaker,

angel investor An angel investor (also known as a business angel, informal investor, angel funder, private investor, or seed investor) is an individual who provides capital for a business or businesses start-up, usually in exchange for convertible debt or owners ...

and

venture capitalist Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which hav ...

, who currently serves as a general partner with

Redpoint Ventures Redpoint Ventures is an American venture capital firm focused on investments in seed, early and growth-stage companies. History The firm was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angel ...

. In 2021, he wa
placed
#6 on the Forbes Midas List of top 100 Venture Capital investors. Prior to Redpoint Ventures, Satish Dharmaraj founded

Zimbra Zimbra Collaboration, formerly known as the Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) before 2019, is a collaborative software suite that includes an email server and a web client. Zimbra was initially developed by LiquidSys, which changed their name ...

, which he then sold to

Yahoo! Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds managed by Apollo Global Man ...

for $350 million, in 2007.

Education and career

Satish Dharmaraj has the

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

and

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast to ...

degrees in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

and "an executive management degree from the

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

." He also holds the

Bachelor of Engineering A Bachelor of Engineering (BEng) or a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) is an academic undergraduate degree awarded to a student after three to five years of studying engineering at an accredited college or university. In the UK, a Bache ...

degree in

Electronics and Communication Engineering Electronics engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering which emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current fl ...

from

Government College of Technology, Coimbatore Government College of Technology, Coimbatore (GCT) is an autonomous state-funded engineering college located in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. It is affiliated to Anna University. History Government College of Technology, Coimbatore was founded ...

. Dharmaraj "managed the messaging business at

Openwave Systems Openwave (formerly software.com, phone.com, and Libris, Inc) is a division of Enea. It provides video traffic management and 5G mobile products. Two of Openwave's former products launched as private companies; Openwave Mobility and Openwave ...

" (in addition to holding positions at

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

and OneBox) and consequently, in 2003, became the founder and chief executive officer of

, which he sold to

Yahoo Yahoo! (, styled yahoo''!'' in its logo) is an American web services provider. It is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California and operated by the namesake company Yahoo! Inc. (2017–present), Yahoo Inc., which is 90% owned by investment funds ma ...

for US$350 million in 2007. According to Dharmaraj, his success at Zimbra was due to pioneering a web browser that focused on

email Electronic mail (email or e-mail) is a method of exchanging messages ("mail") between people using electronic devices. Email was thus conceived as the electronic ( digital) version of, or counterpart to, mail, at a time when "mail" meant ...

. While at Yahoo, Dharmaraj "helped Yahoo make its email system open to third party applications." After stepping down from Yahoo in 2009, Dharmaraj became a partner for

, where he currently serves. Dharmaraj was Redpoint's first entrepreneur partner and ''

PandoDaily PandoDaily, or simply Pando, was a web publication offering technology news, analysis, and commentary, with a focus on Silicon Valley and startup companies. History PandoDaily was started by former TechCrunch writer Sarah Lacy on January 16, 2012 ...

'' reported that "Redpoint’s experience with Dharmaraj went well, spurring the firm’s current addition of Ryan Sarver from

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Investments and acquisitions

Satish Dharmaraj led investments in

Snowflake A snowflake is a single ice crystal that has achieved a sufficient size, and may have amalgamated with others, which falls through the Earth's atmosphere as snow.Knight, C.; Knight, N. (1973). Snow crystals. Scientific American, vol. 228, no. ...

Infer Inferences are steps in reasoning, moving from premises to logical consequences; etymologically, the word '' infer'' means to "carry forward". Inference is theoretically traditionally divided into deduction and induction, a distinction that in ...

Sonos SONOS, short for "silicon–oxide–nitride–oxide–silicon", more precisely, " polycrystalline silicon"—"silicon dioxide"—"silicon nitride"—"silicon dioxide"—"silicon", is a cross sectional structure of MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconduc ...

Coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

Gogobot Gogobot (later rebranded Trip.com) was an online travel business headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The company was rebranded Trip.com in November 2016 and acquired by the Ctrip Group in 2017. Founded in 2010, by Travis Katz and Ori Zaltz ...

, Peel,

Pure Storage Pure Storage is an American publicly traded technology company headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States. It develops all-flash data storage hardware and software products. Pure Storage was founded in 2009 and developed its product ...

MapR MapR was a business software company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. MapR software provides access to a variety of data sources from a single computer cluster, including big data workloads such as Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark, a dist ...

, and Big Switch. In 2014,

Acompli Acompli is a discontinued mobile app that allowed for user interaction with email messages as well as management of multiple email accounts in one programme. In addition, the tool also organized one's calendar and shared files. This application pr ...

, which was funded by Dharmaraj's

, was acquired by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

and this acquisition is worth over US$200 million.

Pulse In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the nec ...

, which Dharmaraj funded, was bought out by

LinkedIn LinkedIn () is an American business and employment-oriented online service that operates via websites and mobile apps. Launched on May 5, 2003, the platform is primarily used for professional networking and career development, and allows job se ...

for approximately US$90 million. Satish Dharmaraj was an angel investor for

Posterous Posterous was a simple blogging platform started in May 2008. It supported integrated and automatic posting to other social media tools such as Flickr, Twitter, and Facebook, a built-in Google Analytics package, and custom themes. It was based in ...

, which was sold to

in 2012. In the same year,

StorSimple StorSimple was a privately held company based in Santa Clara, California, marketing cloud storage. History StorSimple was funded by venture capital from Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Mayfield Fund for a total of $31. ...

, a product of Dharmaraj, was acquired by

. In 2011, Cloud.com, which was built up by Satish Dharmaraj, was acquired by

Citrix Systems Citrix Systems, Inc. is an American multinational cloud computing and virtualization technology company that provides server, application and desktop virtualization, networking, software as a service (SaaS), and cloud computing technologies. C ...

. In 2017,

Trip.com Trip.com is an international online travel agency. The website is owned by Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip.com International, Ltd. in China), one of the world's largest online travel agencies with over 400 million users worldwide, and also the par ...

(formerly Gogobot) was acquired by CTrip. In 2012, Dharmaraj's Redpoint Ventures helped raise US$60 million for

Zendesk Zendesk is an American company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides software-as-a-service products related to customer support, sales, and other customer communications. The company was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2007. Z ...

's initial public offering (

IPO An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

Works

Articles

Articles written by Dharmaraj include: *
Staying in Pitch Mode
- ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

Video interviews

*
Entrepreneur-Turned-VC Satish Dharmaraj Speaks!
- ''The Wall Street Journal'' *
Satish Dharmaraj on VC in Third Wold Markets
- ''

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American online newspaper focusing on high tech and startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. In 2010, AOL acquired the company for approximately ...

'' *
Satish Dharmaraj on Citrixs Acquisition of Cloud
- ''

The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

'' *
Satish Dharmaraj on Businesses in Asia and Local Search’s Future
- ''TechCrunch'' *
TC50 2009 Round 1 Judging Session
- ''TechCrunch'' *
TC50 2009 Round 2 Judging Session
- ''TechCrunch''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dharmaraj, Satish American people of Indian descent American technology company founders Harvard Business School alumni Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Midas List