Pranavi Cheemakurti, 24
Venture Investor, Forum Ventures
Location: San Francisco
Education: B.S., Western University (Canada); attending Purdue University Global
Resume: Cheemakurti interned at RBC Capital on the trading floor and then at VU Ventures. She's since worked in early-stage investing at Republic Venture Partners and in seed investing at Forum Ventures.
Fun fact: "I disastrously tried to start a company in college and it blew up in my face."
Venture capital continues to be a diversity laggard. Women make up less than 10% of the industry, according to most surveys, and members of most ethnic minorities are fewer still. But the greatest discrepancies are at the decision-making level — this is the dynamic that Pranavi Cheemakurti is working to change, from the inside.
“I see venture capital as a tool for advocacy and activism,” she said.
Cheemakurti is a venture investor at Forum Ventures, formerly Acceleprise, which specializes in pre-seed and seed-round funding. Since joining the firm in January 2020, she’s worked on roughly a dozen financings, serving as the “final decision maker” on many of them.
Her interest in VC was piqued as a college student in Ontario, Canada, by a video she watched of Silicon Valley investment titan Chamath Palihapitiya, arguing that investors’ decisions can turn capital into an agent of change.
“That idea is what got me hooked,” she said. “Capital and capital allocation can be used as a systemic vehicle to build the world you want to be in.”
Her 200 emails to VC firms to ask about internship opportunities elicited three responses — all no.
She ended up working at a “boot camp” for Canadian female founders seeking to better access capital. A conversation with a principal of VU Venture Partners about some of the companies that had presented led to a meeting with VU founder Skyler Fernandes — and the next day, a summer job offer. She had her foot in the door.
“I had a chance to read deals and run DD (due diligence) like a real VC,” she said.
Cheemakurti took three companies to the VU investment committee, and one of them was funded: “At this point, I was a 22-year-old with a portfolio company.”
So when she again went courting for VC jobs after graduation, things were different: “I had a track record.”
Cheemakurti said she values the chance to bring a fresh — and younger — perspective to venture investment decisions.
“There are not a lot of people who look like me who do this job,” she said. “I am a first-generation South Asian, specifically Indian immigrant. My cultural identification informs my career. My heritage is a huge part of who I am.”
