From Building A Unicorn To Investing In Them with Suranga Chandratillake OBE, General Partner at Balderton Capital

“If you think there’s something that needs to be changed in the world, I think that starting a company is the best and easiest way to achieve that change.”

For our penultimate episode in this VC feature, we’re joined by Suranga Chandratillake OBE, former engineer and entrepreneur, now General Partner at Balderton Capital, one of Europe's leading early stage technology venture capital firms. 

Before joining the world of VC, Suranga founded blinkx, an intelligent video search engine, which he took public and reached a peak market cap of $1bn. 

Now mainly investing at Series A, Suranga has backed some huge names in the industry, including Tessian, Wayve and Beauty Pie.

Tune in to this week’s episode to find out more about: 

➡️ How Bill Gates sparked his curiosity for entrepreneurship [05:23] 

➡️ His Silicon Valley inspired business, bllinkx [07:40] 

➡️ Building a business from 0-$200m a year [10:06] 

➡️ Overcoming common Founder challenges [13:12] 

➡️ Transitioning from Founder to Investor [16:47]

➡️ Why empathy is so important [20:26] 

➡️ Helping Founders change the world at Balderton Capital [23:21] 

➡️ Red flags when assessing Founders [27:10] 

➡️ Advice for Founders on building healthy habits, while spinning many plates [32:23] 

➡️ Championing diversity in the VC ecosystem [37:27] 

⛳ Helpful links:

➡️ Connect with Suranga: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suranga-chandratillake-6a839363/

➡️ More about Balderton Capital: https://www.balderton.com/

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