There is no associate layer between you and a decision. The person in your first meeting is the person who decides, and the one still around three years later.
Founder
Founded 99sa after more than fifteen years around Indian early-stage companies, including a run as managing director of the 50K Ventures angel fund. He takes the first meeting, and he is the one who tells you no when the answer is no.
Director
Joined the board in 2023 and is also a partner at 99 Strategic Advisors, the advisory practice the firm grew out of. She handles the operating and governance side of the work.
A larger firm has to deploy more capital, which means more companies per partner, which means fewer hours for each of them. We would rather stay small and keep the hours.
We take on a handful of new companies at a time. That is the number where you can still remember the details of someone's hiring plan without opening a document. When it starts to slip, we slow down rather than hire our way out of it.
We are not going to pretend a two-person firm has a fifteen-person platform team. What we do have is a network built over more than a decade in the Indian startup ecosystem, and we use it narrowly.
When a portfolio company needs a compliance lead, a first enterprise sales hire, or someone who has priced a product like theirs, we find the person who has actually done it and make the introduction. That is a smaller promise than a platform page, and a more honest one.
We are not running a permanent search. When we do open a role it is usually because a portfolio need has outgrown the person covering it, and we will say exactly what that need is.
If you have built something and want to spend the next decade helping others do it, write to us. Tell us about a company you would have backed early and why. That answer tells us more than a CV.
Tell us what you are building. You will hear back from one of us, not from a form.