Nakul Mandan
Solo GPFounder & Partner, Audacious Ventures
Audacious Ventures founder, B2B seed specialist
Background
Nakul Mandan founded Audacious Ventures in April 2020, raising a $90M debut fund and a $250M second fund (Audacious 2.0, announced 2024), focused on pre-seed and seed B2B investments. He previously served as a General Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners leading SaaS investments, and before that spent time at Battery Ventures. His investment focus spans SaaS, B2B marketplaces, developer tools, and B2B fintech, backing founders capable of building category-defining companies. He studied at IIT Kanpur and grew up in India before building his career in US venture capital. He hosts the podcast 'Knuckle Up with Nakul' featuring conversations with exceptional founders.
Investment Thesis
Backs early-stage B2B founders capable of improbable outcomes; leads or co-leads seed rounds with significant follow-on commitment; avoids hardware.
Investment Focus
Stages
Typical check: $1M–$5M lead
Sectors
Based in: San Francisco, CA (North America)
Notable Investments
WorkOS
Developer identity and enterprise features platform; backed from seed
Multiverse
Apprenticeship platform; unicorn; $500M+ raised
Gainsight
Customer success SaaS; category-defining investment
People.ai
AI revenue intelligence platform
6sense
B2B revenue AI platform; unicorn
Decagon
Conversational AI for customer support; Audacious portfolio
Reflection AI
Autonomous coding agents; Audacious portfolio
Marketo
Marketing automation; acquired by Adobe for $4.75B