Mehta, Manan
Managing Partner, Unshackled Ventures
Manan is a founding partner of Unshackled, an early stage venture capital fund created to support foreign-born entrepreneurs. Founded by two friends who understood the challenges facing immigrants entrepreneurs in the U.S., Unshackled helps innovators turn their ideas into the next great American company. Unshackled is supported by 80+ investors, including Brad Feld, First Round Capital, Jerry Yang and the Emerson Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs.
Prior to Unshackled, Manan ran marketing for ed-tech startup Kno, which was acquired by Intel in 2013. Before Kno, Manan was an investment banker at the Royal Bank of Canada, with his most notable deal being the $1.9B acquisition of Skype lead by Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz in 2009 — later sold to Microsoft for $8.5B. Trained as an engineer at UCLA, Manan’s passions stem from the desire to rapidly iterate to solve problems.
Manan, a first generation American, knows his life is inextricably linked to immigrants. He is a firm believer that immigrants are the heartbeat of entrepreneurship and is focused on helping create more innovative companies in the U.S. Whether it’s story-telling, launching marketing campaigns, product design, financial modeling or helping founders acquire their first customers, Manan is excited about unleashing entrepreneurs to innovate and create opportunities for themselves and society.