We dive deep into our sectors. Our research drives our insights and thesis-driven approach.

In February of this year, we announced the launch of our fund Equal Ventures, and alongside it shared that we would be bringing on a new investment professional onto our team. We’re extremely excited today to share that Simran Suri has joined our team as an Analyst.

One of the characteristics we value most highly at Equal Ventures is cognitive diversity. We love the fact that our team comes from such different backgrounds and experiences and feel that it enables unique insights into the markets and companies we invest in. One of the greatest challenges of bringing together individuals from such different backgrounds is establishing a shared culture that unifies each of these unique backgrounds into a single knowledge system that enables us to make decisions as a team.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been working with our portfolio founders to analyze the impacts of COVID-19 on their companies and the industries they operate within and develop plans to mitigate those impacts. Given the degree of uncertainty around the pandemic, founders need to have plans for a variety of potential scenarios. To facilitate this planning, we created a standardized framework for use across our portfolio that we wanted to make available to the broader community. This activity is meant to be a forward-looking exercise to discuss impacts of the crisis to date, analyze the effects that different scenarios may have on the business, and develop an appropriate plan of action.

We are in unprecedented times with the markets experiencing some of their deepest declines on record and, more importantly, the world is experiencing the most severe pandemic crisis it has seen in the last century. I am not qualified to judge the extent, severity or duration of this crisis, but as someone on the front lines of the two previous market failures (the “Cleantech Bubble” and the “Credit Crisis”) and a perpetual student of markets, I wanted to share some of my lessons learned from prior crises to help others who haven’t experienced times like these before. Our hope is that these learnings help you and your company navigate the crisis ahead.

In light of the Covid-19 pandemic and several MBA internship programs being cancelled, we’ve decided to bring on a few additional interns to our team for the summer of 2020. Although we’re hopeful to make it back to the office sometime this summer, given current circumstances we expect the internships will be remote and we’ll be considering applications from across the U.S. The internships are paid and will be focused on assisting the firm’s research dives to support thesis development. More on the role and application below.