Shardul Shah
Related people
Episodes
Notes
Sourcery · Inside $17B Index Ventures: Anthropic, Wiz, Datadog & the Future…
-
How Much Did Index Ventures Invest in Wiz?
Shardul Shah says Index Ventures invested over $250 million in Wiz over time. The capital came from more than one fund, and he says there is no dollar cap on what the firm can put into a single company.
He does not judge a check by whether it is small enough to protect fund performance. What matters is being the largest and most impactful investor in a category-defining company. A small investment without follow-through erodes that. Index will not write a thousand $2 million checks just to spread the risk, because it would not have the skill or the will to advise and stay engaged with each of those founders.
Concentration can feel good while markets rise and can hurt when they turn. An Ind
-
How Did Index Ventures' 2012 Fund Perform?
Index Ventures' 2012 fund had an 11x DPI as of January 2026, Molly O'Shea says, compared with an industry average of 1.5x. The same January figures showed a 5.1x DPI on Index's $780 million growth fund raised in 2015.
Shardul Shah believes her. The minute he invests, he forgets how much the firm has invested and what ownership it holds, because he does not care. Creating the relationship is the work. He will not confuse outcomes with the judgment calls inside the partnership: whether to invest, whether to double down, and how to influence an entrepreneur. Outcomes can be a function of how effervescent the market is.
The partnership is proud of the returns. More than any single venture fund
-
Why Can't Investors Time an IPO?
Shardul Shah says investors cannot time an IPO. He learned that from the New York Stock Exchange and its media partner: you can never time the window. When a company is in the right place at the right time, it needs the courage to take it. The window itself is outside Index's control.
Index thinks carefully about DPI, the cash it returns to limited partners, and about not getting high on its own supply. IPOs and mergers and acquisitions are the two ways that cash comes back. Mergers and acquisitions have accelerated. He points to Wiz, Cursor, and World Labs. Catalyst is active in those transactions. Public companies are buying private companies, and private companies are merging with each o
-
What Is the Biggest Problem Founders Face Now?
Shardul Shah says the biggest problem founders face is expressing themselves, and the Cartesia founder was right to ignore advice to shut a successful part of the business down.
He joined the board of Cartesia, a voice AI business, about a year to a year and a half ago. At first he gave conventional wisdom: do very few things and do them with excellence. Once he knew the founder, he saw an explorer and an adventurer, someone whose way of expressing himself is to explore and adventure. He told the founder not to run part of the business, to shut it down even though it was successful, to burn the boats, and to focus. The founder ignored him. The perspective lit a fire inside him. He got upset
-
Why Do Startup Valuations Keep Rising?
Shardul Shah says startup valuations keep rising because more capital is moving into private markets than there are giant outcomes to own. He comes back to supply and demand. He is a University of Chicago econ student, not an economist, and private markets are still small next to the capital in the world. He expects that flow to continue. Outcomes can get bigger, and he expects more of them, but the set stays finite. More capital chasing relatively few outcomes means prices go up. Prices are high, and he says they will get higher. In a crowded market, behavior that looks irrational can still be rational. The test he keeps is whether Index is partnering with the best entrepreneurs.
Being cut
-
Why Does Index Ventures Back Founders Before They Have a Business Plan?
Shardul Shah says Index Ventures backed the founders of Wiz before they had a business plan. The investment happened on his birthday. There was no market, no business model, and no metrics to analyze. At that stage the decision was about the people.
He had served on the founders' board 10 years earlier, so he already knew their flaws and their idiosyncrasies, and he still believed in who they were. The craft he describes is listening until that belief shows up, not screening for a list of traits. Patterns are how venture industrializes: define three patterns, put thousands of entrepreneurs through a filter, and decide with statistics at scale. He does not call that a craft. He also does not
-
How Has Index Ventures Stayed Focused on Taste?
Shardul Shah says enormous attention to taste has been true for Index Ventures from the beginning through today. The venture industry is industrializing, and the last five years look very different from the prior 25. In that phase, many people think about patterns, numbers, measurement, and scale, and the shift creates more distinction around how focused Index is on taste.
When Index started 30 years ago, it was three people. Today the firm is 93. He spends more time thinking, sweating, and dreaming about the people than about assets under management, and people are the most important metric. How the firm has changed, and how it has not changed, is interesting. Respecting where the firm cam