Kartik Bandarwad
Venture Scout at LvlUp Ventures, ExitFund, and Yobe; Venture Fellow at Venture Institute
Sharing educational content on venture capital, startup financing, and AI/tech trends while actively engaging with founders and the VC community
Intro
I'm Kartik Bandarwad, a Venture Scout at LvlUp Ventures, ExitFund, and Yobe, and a Venture Fellow at Venture Institute. My journey started in data analytics at Sutherland, then moved into venture capital through fellowships, and now I'm actively scouting for promising startups across multiple firms. I'm passionate about demystifying startup financing, exploring AI infrastructure like vector databases and agentic workflows, and building tools like Scoutez to solve trust problems in VC scouting. I love sharing educational content on SAFEs, investment memos, and tech trends, and I'm always looking to connect with founders building interesting things. My background in data science and engineering gives me a unique lens for evaluating tech startups.
Networking
What I can offer
- ›Insight and analysis on venture capital, startup financing, and AI/tech trends
- ›Review and sharing of startup deals through scouting roles
- ›Access to Scoutez tool for secure deal flow sharing with founder consent
What I'm looking for
- ›Direct engagement with founders building something interesting
Best fit for
Focus
Current interests
Core competencies
Background
Career
Started as Senior Associate-Data Analytics at Sutherland, then Venture Capital Fellow at Illume Foundation, now Venture Scout at multiple firms and Venture Fellow at Venture Institute
Education
Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from RV College Of Engineering (2016-2020)
Achievements
- ›Completed VC Lab's Venture Institute program covering deal flow, due diligence, memo writing, and fund modeling
- ›Completed VC Analyst course from EntryLevel
- ›Authored and published multi-part article series on SAFEs
- ›Wrote and published detailed investment memo on Pinecone
- ›Built 'Scoutez' tool to help venture scouts securely share deal flow with founder consent
- ›Passed LinkedIn Skill Assessments for Python and MySQL
Opinions
- Model Context Protocol (MCP) is a significant shift, blending APIs and RAG to standardize how AI agents fetch info and take actions
- VC scouting has a 'trust problem' and founder consent for sharing information is 'non-negotiable'
- Moved '80% of conversations to Claude-1.3' prior to newer releases
- Advocates for simplicity in B2B fintech pricing strategies, especially at early stages
Personality
Communication style
Enthusiastic, explanatory, and professionally engaged with celebratory emojis
Formality — 7/10
Vocabulary