Manish Patel
Manish holds a BS and BA from Stanford University and has taught there for over a decade. His family is originally from East Africa and he grew up in rural Kentucky and Virginia before going west for college. Early access to a Commodore 128 led Manish down a path to study engineering and a passion for technology.
Manish is a Silicon Valley veteran who solves problems at the intersection of business, technology, and human experience. He follows his passion for technologies that address deep needs and evolve to products which become part of everyday life. t Google, Manish was fortunate to lead and collaborate with teams that designed, developed, and scaled products with global impact including Google Ads, TV, and Maps. In addition, he built a few products that were brilliant failures. He also worked closely with the co-founders on special projects including running Google’s corporate strategy and goal setting process: OKRs. As the company scaled from private to public, Manish held several other strategic roles and spent significant time overseas as Google established its global presence. After Google, Manish joined Highland Capital and helped expand the firm’s offices in California. Manish is certainly the “accidental” venture capitalist but grew to love the craft. He focuses on early stage investing. Manish was able to partner with a number of exceptional entrepreneurs over the years who have scaled their businesses to public companies and multi billion dollar acquisitions.
Manish's passion for building extends to many aspects of his life. He has taught in the Stanford School of Engineering for years as well as serving as a Fellow at the University of Toronto - CDL. He was also recognized as a Distinguished Fellow by IDEO CoLab. And when he can, he loves to find excuses to go to his local machine shop.
Manish has spent his career at the edge of innovation as an operator, inventor, and as a venture capitalist. He deeply believes in the idea that the best products, those that truly impact us, shift from being novel technologies to becoming commonplace, disappearing into our daily lives.