Mahendra Ramsinghani

Mahendra Ramsinghani is the founder of Secure Octane, a Silicon Valley-based cybersecurity seed fund. He brings two decades of business and investment expertise to his work advising cybersecurity startups like Icebrg (backed by Madrona, Formation 8) Kryptnostic (backed by Index, Harrison Metal, Felicis) and Attivo Networks (Bain Capital). Mahendra is the organizer of Bay Area Security Startups, a monthly meetup with more than 350 members.

As managing director of First Step Fund, Mahendra led investments in more than 50 startups. He is the author of two books on venture capital and startups: The Business of Venture Capital (Wiley Finance, 2014) and Startup Boards (Wiley, 2014), which he co-authored with noted venture capitalist Brad Feld. He has published articles in Forbes and the MIT Technology Review and on Huffington Post.

As a frequent speaker on cybersecurity, venture capital and technology, Mahendra has delivered presentations at meetings of organizations such as Swissnex (San Francisco) and the Silicon Valley chapter of the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) and at the IBF Venture Capital Investing Conference (San Francisco), the Cascadia Summit (Vancouver, British Columbia) and the Thomson Reuters VCJ Alpha Conference (Boston and San Francisco). He has also appeared on National Public Radio.

Mahendra’s educational background includes a bachelor of engineering degree (electronics) and an MBA (finance and marketing) from the University of Pune in India.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Mahendra Ramsinghani and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications Inc. or its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.