Venky Harinarayan, is an e-commerce veteran who co-founded comparison shopping engine Junglee (acquired by Amazon in 1998), worked closely with Jeff Bezos to create Amazon Marketplace, created topical guide to the Web Kosmix (now known as Walmart Labs), and served as angel investor in companies such as Facebook and Lyft.
He has just launched Rocketship Ventures, a seed-stage firm which uses data science to analyze promising investment opportunities in consumer Internet companies.
In this podcast, Venky talks with Mayfield’s Navin Chaddha about learning first principles of customer feedback from Bezos, lessons from the 2008 recession, trends in e-commerce today, using data to identify promising companies, and the importance of focus for entrepreneurs.