Venky Harinarayan is an Indian

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values th ...

. He is the co-founder of Cambrian Ventures and

Kosmix Walmart Labs (formerly named Kosmix and @WalmartLabs) became part of Walmart Global Tech, the technology and business services organization within Walmart. Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaraman founded Kosmix in 2005. In April 2011, Walmart acqu ...

. Harinarayan also co-founded Junglee Corp. and played a significant role at

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

in the late 1990s. Originally from

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

, Harinarayan has a PhD 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 ...

from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

(1997, under

Jeffrey Ullman Jeffrey David Ullman (born November 22, 1942) is an American computer scientist and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. His textbooks on compilers (various editions are popularly known as the dr ...

) and a

Bachelor of Technology A Bachelor of Technology (Latin ''Baccalaureus Technologiae'', commonly abbreviated as B.Tech. or BTech; with honours as B.Tech. (Hons.)) is an undergraduate academic degree conferred after the completion of a three to five-year program of studi ...

in Computer Science from

IIT Madras Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) is a public technical university located in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India. As one of the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), it is recognized as an Institute of National Importance and has be ...

(Class of 1988). While at Stanford, Harinarayan co-wrote a paper on implementing

data cube In computer programming contexts, a data cube (or datacube) is a multi-dimensional ("n-D") array of values. Typically, the term data cube is applied in contexts where these arrays are massively larger than the hosting computer's main memory; exam ...

s with

Anand Rajaraman Anand Rajaraman is a Web and technology entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Cambrian Ventures and Kosmix. Rajaraman also co-founded former Junglee Corp. and played a significant role at Amazon.com in the late 1990s. Personal life and education ...

and

Jeff Ullman Jeffrey David Ullman (born November 22, 1942) is an American computer scientist and the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at Stanford University. His textbooks on compilers (various editions are popularly known as the Pri ...

, which is among the top 600 most cited computer science articles over the last 20 years. Together with four other engineers, Harinarayan founded Junglee Corp. in 1996. Junglee Corp. pioneered Internet comparison shopping. Junglee Corp. was acquired by Amazon.com Inc. in August 1998 for 1.6 million shares of stock valued at $250 million. Harinarayan then became general manager at Amazon.com, where he worked with founder and CEO

Jeff Bezos Jeffrey Preston Bezos ( ;; and Robinson (2010), p. 7. ''né'' Jorgensen; born January 12, 1964) is an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former preside ...

to help create Amazon.com's marketplace business. Marketplace is currently Amazon.com's most profitable and fastest-growing business, accounting for almost 25% of all US transactions. Harinarayan also was an inventor of the concept underlying Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk. Harinarayan and his business partner, Anand Rajaraman, co-founded Cambrian Ventures, an early stage

venture capital 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 ha ...

fund, in 2000. Cambrian went on to back several companies later acquired by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

. Cambrian funded companies like Mobissimo,

Aster Data Systems Aster Data Systems was a data management and analysis software company headquartered in San Carlos, California. It was founded in 2005 and acquired by Teradata in 2011. History Aster Data was co-founded in 2005 by Stanford University graduate stu ...

and TheFind.com. In 2017, Harinarayan became a special partner to NeoTribe Ventures.

References

External links

Cambrian Ventures
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harinarayan, Venky Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Indian emigrants to the United States IIT Madras alumni Stanford University alumni American computer businesspeople American chief executives Businesspeople in online retailing Silicon Valley people American computer scientists American people of Indian descent