Deedy Das, Principal at Menlo Ventures, says the firm is going “all in on AI,” with a strong belief that generative AI represents the next big platform shift in Silicon Valley.
Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Das said, “If you look at the history of the Valley, almost all great companies have come from a single revolution… for our time, it’s definitely what generative AI can do for us.”
Das, who joined Menlo after building Glean—a $7 billion AI enterprise startup—as part of its founding team, believes venture capital today is about far more than just providing capital. “Founders are not just looking for money anymore. They want a partner who can provide moral and emotional support and help them grind it out,” he said.
A self-described VC with a founder’s mindset, Das says his hands-on experience at Glean—where he worked across engineering, product, sales, and hiring—gave him a real understanding of what it takes to build a company from the ground up. “At Glean is when I solidified—oh my God—this is how companies are built.”
Das grew up in Kolkata and always dreamed of working in Silicon Valley. After studying computer science at Cornell and working on Google Search, he left the tech giant to help launch Glean. Venture capital wasn’t initially part of the plan. But he realised his startup journey gave him a unique lens to support early-stage companies.
His transition to VC came with the idea that founders benefit more from investors who understand product, hiring, and tech—not just finance. “Early-stage venture isn’t about reading spreadsheets. It’s about understanding how to get a company off the ground,” he said.
Below is the excerpt of the interview.
Q: Let’s get a little bit of your backstory – Cornell, Google, Glean and now Menlo – how did this come about?
Das: I grew up in Kolkata. When I was in India, what I really wanted to do always was to come here and be an engineer somewhere in the Valley. While growing up you would look up to companies like Google which was the bastion of the internet for the longest time. So, that was really the dream.
When I came to Cornell, I studied computer science, eventually worked in Google where I was working on search and that was sort of a dream for me. However, with time, I realised that the potential and what the Valley really offers is far more than working in a big company. So, I knew I wanted to do a startup, and that is when I made the transition.
So, I wanted to start something, and that’s when I ran into Arvind, we spoke and then I joined Glean on the founding team.
Q: That was your best decision, I believe?
Das: It was a fairly good decision. I mean, Glean worked out pretty well. It’s a $7 billion company. We saw it grow from, maybe five people when I was there to now, it’s almost a 1,000-person company across many places. But really, at Glean is when I solidified—oh my God—this is how companies are built.
After Glean is when I realised, there aren’t enough people on the investing side who know how to build a company and understand all the work that’s involved. I didn’t really want to go into venture capital; that was never something I had planned. But after doing engineering, product, a lot of hiring, sales, marketing at Glean, I started to understand how businesses are formed.
So, it made sense to go and start a company of my own, but I realised it would be so much more interesting if I could help a bunch of different companies figure this out on their own. And that’s how I moved into venture capital, which is traditionally an industry full of people from business school who do finance and know how to read an Excel spreadsheet.
That was never how early-stage venture worked, though—you don’t have many numbers to go off on. What you really need is someone who understands technology, how to hire, and how to get a company off the ground. And I thought, maybe I would be pretty decent at that. And that’s how I came here. It’s been about a year, year and a half, and I’ve really been enjoying it. I feel like it is really, really fun to work with companies that are just getting things off the ground.
Q: A VC with the founder’s mindset—would you describe yourself that way?
Das: I guess so. A lot of what founders look for—it’s a very intimidating journey. You’re doing this thing, often for the first time, alone or maybe with one other person, and it’s very isolating. It’s a 24/7 job. You don’t know who to look to for help. And really, all you have is your investor.
If your investor understands that journey, really empathises with it, and knows how to do it, I think that’s a pretty good sell. We can work better together to get that company off the ground. So yes, I would describe it that way.
Q: Speaking of getting companies off the ground, the slogan everywhere inside the Menlo office says “All In on AI.” That’s not unusual—everyone in the Valley today is all in on AI. But how are you seeing this differently? How are you doing this differently?
Das: If you look at the history of the Valley, almost all great companies have come from a single revolution. You had the internet era, the dot-com bubble, and then everything that followed. Then you had cloud, then mobile. Each of these tectonic shifts in how things are built changed the kinds of companies that could emerge.
Each era produced dominant, well-known, household-name companies. For our time, it’s definitely what generative AI can do for us. We’re seeing a bunch of different companies come about. But unlike previous platform shifts—where most new companies emerged from the ease of building and distributing products—AI is different.
Today, in the world of AI, investing and understanding these businesses is really about deeply understanding technology and talent, especially at the early stage. And that’s kind of where we come in.
At Menlo, I work closely with three key people I want to highlight: Tim Tully, the ex-CTO of Splunk, a $50 billion company; Josh Redfern, the ex-Chief Product Officer at Atlassian; and Matt Groening, who built and sold a billion-dollar company.
When you look at founders today, access to capital isn’t what venture capital offers anymore. That used to be the case—it was a niche industry where you could only go talk to five people and they’d give you capital. But now there is plenty of capital. For great founders, that’s not even what they’re looking for. They know they can find capital in many places. They’re looking for a partner in the journey—someone who can provide both moral and emotional support but also be on the ground helping them grind it out and get the business off the ground.
That’s where I think we differentiate ourselves. We know how to do a lot of this, and it comes across immediately in early interactions with founders. Just last week, I was talking to an early-stage founder, and within five minutes he is like, “I feel like I’ve skipped an hour of content because you just get it.”
And I was like, “Of course we get it. We live and breathe this.” He said, “With other VCs, I feel like I have to explain everything. I don’t have to do that with you. I enjoy talking to you.”
That’s what we think is our differentiator. Of course, you need investing experience too—it’s valuable for a lot of reasons. But combining that with operational experience is what really allows us to be unique and differentiated in a market with thousands of companies.
Q: Thousands of companies—and yet some outliers. You’re backing some of those outliers. Let’s talk about Anthropic and the bets you’re making there. A $65 billion valuation with the latest fundraise. What excites you about what’s going on at Anthropic?
Das: There are so many exciting things about Anthropic. If you look around the world, a lot of people want to be software engineers. Computer science may be the most popular major in the world—if not America. That shift happened in the last 15 years.
Back in the ’90s, the aspirational career paths were banking or consulting. Over time, that shifted to computer science, and so much talent has gone into it.
What excites me the most about Anthropic is that we’re finally seeing a world where this highly skilled job—a software engineer—you can have a machine do many parts of it. That’s a tectonic shift in how we even view the future of technology.
The other day, I was analysing data for a company. This was a 100MB Excel file—it takes two minutes just to open. I wanted to run a analysis. I opened up Anthropic’s product, Claude Code, and just said, “I want you to run a cohort retention analysis on a dollar basis, transaction basis, and customer basis.”
That’s a task that would normally take an MBA associate a week to complete. The computer did it in two minutes and printed out beautiful graphs. If that’s not magical, I don’t know what is.
When we were growing up, this is what we dreamt of—being able to just do what we want to do without writing code. I think that’s what is so exciting.
Q: That’s magical—and scary at the same time. Even the team at Anthropic warns us about a white-collar bloodbath. So, in this context, is computer science still going to be the sexy thing? Are MBA associates still going to be a thing in the future? What are we talking about?
Das: I know—it’s really scary. And I think every technological shift brings some fear. It’s hard to predict the future, especially with something like this. You risk sounding foolish by even trying to make any predictions. I don’t know what’s going to happen four weeks from now.
All the guesses—how models change, how intelligence increases over time—we don’t know.
That said, if I look at history, usually when there’s a monumental shift, humans adapt and find something else to do. So, are there risks? Are white-collar jobs in danger? Maybe. But you could also argue that even if you don’t need 100 people to do a job anymore, and can do it with 10, those 90 people might go do new, productive things—and society as a whole gains.
One thing everyone talks about—but it’s still TBD—is when generative AI will actually contribute to productivity and GDP. I think it’s coming.
Change takes time, but even today I speak to companies that are doing more with fewer people than ever. We’re talking about billion-dollar companies with hefty revenue run by fewer than 10 people. Five years ago, a company at that scale would have had 250, maybe 500 employees.
So just that productivity increase alone—I’m very optimistic about the future.
Watch the accompanying video for the entire conversation.