Q&A with Ajay Agarwal, a director at Bain Capital Ventures
Bay Area investment manager explains why he’s excited about opportunities with the cloud, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems
Ajay Agarwal just got a billion new reasons to be excited about investing in startups. Bain Capital Ventures, the investment arm of Bain Capital whose investments include DocuSign, SurveyMonkey and Rent the Runway, last month raised $1 billion to put into early- and growth-stage startups, and now has $4.9 billion in assets under management. Other high-profile companies that were in the firm’s portfolio at one time or another include LinkedIn and Jet.com.
Agarwal, one of the firm’s managing directors in the Bay Area, invests in companies focused on the cloud, artificial intelligence and autonomous systems.
This news organization chatted with Agarwal, who spends most of his time at the firm’s San Francisco office, about startups, Bain’s approach to funding and what’s hot and what’s not. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q
What companies are you most excited about? What are they doing?
A
You’re seeing companies in every single industry adopt the cloud. It’s really setting the stage and foundation for the next decade of opportunity. And it really starts with AI. There’s access to so much data. The power of machine learning — it can ingest data and gain insights.
One example is FourKites. Trucks of any kind — tractor-trailer, delivery vehicle — can have a GPS sensor that allows for tracking where they are. The company sells software to large shippers that can integrate into internal systems. They know exactly which inventory is in which trucks, and where those trucks are. They can predict if a truck is going to be late. That’s a great example of an old-school industry getting transformed by AI.
Elsewhere, AI can look at which medical procedures are actually driving outcomes, and it’s driving a set of changes in the health care system. The cloud, plus machine learning, are transforming the economy.
Q
You invest in providers of autonomous systems. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
A
We were the first institutional investor in Kiva Systems, which was bought by Amazon. The beauty of the Kiva system was that it eliminated humans having to walk up and down the aisles to pick the items in a fulfillment center. That basic concept is how we’re approaching autonomy going forward. Machines will do parts of the job that are monotonous, but still rely on humans for some aspects. Giving lower-level tasks to machines only increases the value of human capabilities.