Yousuf Khan is a Partner at Ridge Ventures, a seed and Series A stage venture fund investing in enterprise and B2B startups. With a deep understanding of startup growth and scaling challenges, Yousuf not only drives Ridge’s investment portfolio forward but also provides hands-on support to founders, offering guidance rooted in his extensive experience across leadership roles. He currently serves as a board director for Ridge-backed companies, including Archera, Cerby, Chisel Labs, Lightyear, Rafay, and Rewind.
Before joining Ridge, Yousuf held several pivotal positions in leading technology companies. He was the first CIO of Automation Anywhere ($6.84 billion company), played a dual role as CIO and Vice President of Customer Success at AI-driven cloud platform Moveworks ($2.1 billion company), and served as CIO at two public companies, Pure Storage (PSTG) and Qualys (QLYS). His deep industry expertise also includes advisory roles with companies like Zoom, Productiv, and Material Security.
In this episode, Yousuf shares his journey into venture capital, discussing key insights on building a career in VC, the importance of founder empathy, and the role of self-awareness and diversity in investing.He offers practical advice on how VCs can create information arbitrage, draw value from feedback cycles, and support founders through challenges at scale. The conversation also delves into best practices and strategies for enterprise software founders, covering topics like customer obsession, board meetings, and leadership at scale.
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