Summary: This is a 2-part candid interview with venture capitalist Kittu Kolluri (http://www.nea.com/NEATeam/TeamMemberDisplay/index.cfm?IDP=48) of NEA. Earlier today, Teracent, one of Kittu's portfolio company was acquired (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_acquires_teracent_wants_to_make_display_ads.php) by Google for an undisclosed amount. I met with Kittu at NEA’s Sand Hill Road Office in Menlo Park to find out how he made this transition from being an engineer to an investor. Who were his mentors? How did he decide to become an engineer? What led him to become an investor? And, he share his thoughts on failure and success. Kittu (http://kamlabhattshow.com/pdcst/?s=kittu) started his engineering career at SGI, and while there got to know Jim Clarke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Clark), who co-founded Netscape and Healtheon.Michael Lewis’ bestseller book published in 1999 The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story (http://www.salon.com/tech/books/1999/10/22/new_new_thing/index.html) evolved around the legendary Jim Clark and Kittu was featured quite a bit in the book. Kittu was one of the co-founders of Healtheon, a company that was founded to change the healthcare industry. Eventually Healtheon was acquired by WebMD. After Healtheon, he went to lead a networking startup called Neoteris that was acquired by Netscreen, which in turn was acquired by Juniper Networks. In January 2006 Kittu joined NEA and now and sits on the boards of Nevis Networks, PortAuthority, RingThree Technologies (http://kamlabhattshow.com/blog/2006/11/06/podcast-post-mojopacs-shan-appajodu/), and SnapTell. He co-leads the NEA IndoUS Fund along with Vinod Dham and Vani Kola. Kittu is a graduate of IIT, Madras and State University of New York, Buffalo. Here is a link to Part-2 (http://kamlashow.com/content/900500/maincontent/mp3/broadband/KittuKolluri_Part2_KamlaShow)of the interview with Kittu. This interview was originally recorded in 2006.
