Over the years, Trinity Ventures has made multiple investments in enterprise startups, with a bit of a focus on SaaS, big data and cloud computing. With that in mind, it’s promoting Karan Mehandru, a specialist in those areas, as a general partner in the firm.
Mehandru has spent the last three years with Trinity, joining in 2010 and leading a number of investments for the firm, including ScaleArc, Act-On Software, and RJMetrics. He’s currently on the board of the latter two companies and also works with Trinity portfolio companies ScaleArc, ShopIgniter, and Taulia.
Trinity Ventures was founded in 1986 and over the past 25 years or so has made investments in cloud and mobile infrastructure, digital media, SaaS and social commerce companies. While there’s a pretty even split between its consumer and enterprise business, the firm has recently made a number of investments in infrastructure and cloud portions of its practice.
With a specialty in topics like SaaS, big data analytics and storage, and next-gen data center architecture, Mehandru will fit right in. Before joining Trinity, Mehandru was at Scale Venture Partners, working on investments in SaaS, data center infrastructure, and enterprise software companies. Prior to that, he worked at companies like Synopsys and PMC-Sierra.
In a phone conversation this morning, Mehandru said there were three things that really stood out about Trinity for him: First, there’s a feeling of intellectual honesty where everyone shares a sense of responsibility for the firm. There’s also a more collaborative view on investing there, where all the partners are well-versed in the entire portfolio. And finally, it’s just a fun environment to be in, according to Mehandru. “You want to enjoy spending time with the people you work with,” he said.
With the promotion, Mehandru will join Trinity General Partners Ajay Chopra, Noel Fenton, Patricia Nakache, Larry Orr, Dan Scholnick, Gus Tai, and Fred Wang. Last fall, Trinity recently raised a new, $325 million fund, which was its 11th since being founded.