ABOUT
Salil is General Partner at Bay, and focuses on areas in which he has operating experience and thus some intuition. Since 2006, he has invested approximately US$75M into 20 companies across two themes: (1) open source and enterprise software infrastructure, and (2) infrastructure and platforms around social graph APIs.
Salil has led Bay's investments in DynaTrace (application performance management; acquired by Compuware), Buddy Media (platform for brands to engage with customers on social media), SpringSource (open source; acquired by VMware), Engine Yard (open source, cloud, Ruby on Rails), Sonatype (open source, software artifact management), Mulesoft (open source, ESBs), G2One (open source; acquired by ...More
SpringSource), Lending Club (peer to peer lending), Jambool (virtual currencies for social graphs; acquired by Google), Finestrella (MVNO in Mexico), Cake Financial (social network and analytics for stock market investors; acquired by E*Trade), Marketocracy (wisdom of crowds applied to money management), Financial Content (syndicated financial content to thousands of local newspapers), Triggit (real-time bidding across ad exchanges), FantasyBook (completely on-Facebook fantasy sports apps; acquired by Citizen Sports, now part of Yahoo), and Vaxart (flu vaccines).
Salil also serves as board member or board observer at Tealeaf (customer experience management), Plastic Jungle (marketplace for exchanging gift cards), Eventful (world's largest database of events), PurePlay (real-money online subscription poker), and Apigee (API management platform).
Prior to Bay, Salil was founder and CEO of Customware, a CORBA middleware company (acquired by Visigenic, now part of Micro Focus), co-founder and CEO of The Middleware Company, a Java middleware company (acquired by Precise, now part of Symantec), and of TheServerSide.com network of developer media sites (acquired by TechTarget). Salil held technical leadership positions at several technology companies including Sun Microsystems, and taught summer courses at Stanford University.
During his years as an irreverent entrepreneur, he often wondered what went on "in those little VC brains." Therefore as a venture investor, he tries to be honest and transparent about what he is trying to accomplish, respects entrepreneurs' time by working hard, doing his homework, and openly discussing the merits of ideas or strategies, not only as a means of active learning, but as a foundation for long term relationships.
Education
B.S., Cornell University
M.S., Stanford University
