Salil Deshpande

Salil Deshpande was an engineer for 15 years before becoming an investor, and he credits this expertise as the key to his success as a seed-stage investor. Deshpande has been a venture capitalist since 2006, when he became a general partner at Bay Partners. He also did a long stint as the managing director of the venture arm of Bain Capital. Now, he’s a general partner at Uncorrelated Ventures, his early-stage fund that focuses on open-source and infrastructure software. Deshpande’s early investments in decentralized-finance startups have paid off: CoinDCX reached unicorn status in August at a $1.1 billion valuation. His best piece of advice for seed investing: “Specialize and be a domain expert so that you can add value to startups.”