Anshu Agarwal has joined VC firm Converge as a general partner.
Converge
Longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur Anshu Agarwal has decided it’s time to be a mentor rather than an operator.
In 2021, DigitalOcean Holdings Inc.
DOCN,
acquired Agarwal’s cloud company, Nimbella, the fifth startup in her portfolio of nearly two decades. After serving as vice president and general manager of DigitalOcean’s Serverless & Kubernetes business unit, elevating DigitalOcean to more than 600,000 customers, she was ready for a change.
“When I left DigitalOcean, I could have started another company or joined an established one,” Agarwal said in an interview. “I know what founders want after years as an operator.”
On Thursday, venture-capital firm Converge named Agarwal as a general partner, thereby establishing a base camp in Silicon Valley. “It is a big change for me,” Agarwal said. “I used to receive checks [from investors], and I want to give them.”
Agarwal intends to bring the same team spirit and entrepreneurship skills to funding for startups in the business-to-business, AI-software-stack and robotics-hardware sectors. She considered several offers from VC companies before selecting the Cambridge, Mass.-based Converge, which she worked with at Nimbella.
“When you have the opportunity to work with an A+ player and bring them to your team, you grab it,” Maia Heymann, also a general partner at Converge, said in a statement. “Anshu’s rare five-times successful startup-to-exit experience makes her a unique partner to the founders we back.”
As a venture capitalist, Agarwal said, she wants to “let the founders do their magic.”
She added: “It’s about advice, not just dollars and connections. I’m done with my entrepreneur chapter. It keeps you young in helping people with great ideas.”