a new york personal investing & advisory practice, operated as a single-family office
new york city
Vish Ventures is how I put 25+ years of founding-level work at Yahoo, Spotify, WeWork, CLEAR, and Justworks to work – as an entrepreneur, operator, and investor, out of new york city.
flexible personal capital, no fund cycle, no committee, no mandate constraints – just conviction where I have the operating depth to back it up.
That work convinced me the single-job career is giving way to something else – portfolio careers, expert operators, polyhat builders doing more with less. vish ventures is how I back that shift personally: capital and time for the people building it, at the intersection of what they're great at, what they love, and what the world actually needs – ikigai, more or less.
direct checks from pre-seed onward, and coinvestments alongside venture studios, collectives, funds, and other investors I trust.
limited partner commitments in venture funds and emerging managers. open to secondaries, SPVs, and opportunistic assets.
board and advisory seats, scoped operating engagements, and venture creation through Forward Share Ventures – the venture studio I cofounded.
sector-flexible by design, with conviction where I have operating depth: AI-native software, the expert economy and the future of work, marketplaces, subscription and consumer, identity, advertising and media, fintech, and health.
I've built at the founding level inside category-defining companies: product serving 200 million users at Yahoo, Spotify's Ad Studio built from scratch with 60% year-over-year advertising revenue growth, $250M+ in CAPEX savings at WeWork, 100M+ identity verifications at CLEAR, and a product organization scaled to 250 people across three countries at Justworks.
I've advised 50+ companies over the past decade, and cofounded Vesta Equity, MakeMe, and Forward Share Ventures. computer science at the University of Maryland; management, innovation, and technology at MIT Sloan.
direct, fast, and founder-first. personal diligence, decisions in days, and hands-on help where it's wanted – I operate, I don't just allocate. I hold every relationship to the same standard: supportive, constructive, respectful, inspiring, positive, trustful. #myscript
I work largely by introduction.
– vish rao