Dr. Manu Kumar

Dr. Manu Kumar, co-founder and CEO of HiHello, began his tech journey at age 13 after attending a coding summer camp. Originally from India, he moved to Pittsburgh, PA to pursue his undergraduate and master’s degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering and Software Engineering, respectively, at Carnegie Mellon University. His entrepreneurial career took off with the founding of SneakerLabs, Inc., which was acquired for over $100M in the early 2000s. He then served as the CEO of iMeet, Inc., which merged with Netspoke in 2002, and the combined entity was later sold to Premiere Conferencing in 2005. After moving to Palo Alto, California, Dr. Kumar earned both an M.S. and a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. He founded K9 Ventures in 2009, a venture capital firm focusing on pre-seed investments, notably in Lyft and Twilio. Additionally, he co-founded CardMunch in 2009 and Carta in 2012, with Carta recently achieving a valuation of $1.7 billion. Outside of his professional life, Dr. Kumar enjoys spending time with his family and his golden retriever, Stella, at the local dog park.