Former Apple evangelist Guy Kawasaki is in town this week and he’s squeezed in a Mumbai Tweetup into his itinerary on Wednesday at 7.00 pm at the Oberoi lobby. Who is Kawasaki? Apart from being a bestselling author on entrepreneurship — his most successful title is ‘The Art of the Start’ — he is also a venture capitalist at Garage Technology Ventures. Some of you may be familiar with another name associated with Garage in India — DFJ India chief Mohanjit Jolly. Garage’s team page still lists Jolly as a venture partner.
Kawasaki co-founded Garage in 1997 with Craig Johnson and Rich Karlgaard as an accelerator or an intermediary whose purpose was to help entrepreneurs raise angel or venture capital. In 2002 it became a seed and early stage fund.
A snapshot of Garage’s investment criteria (more here):
- Software, services, clean technology, material sciences
- $500,000 to $3,000,000 per company
- US-based companies, specifically in California and Western US
Does Garage have plans to back Indian entrepreneurs? Kawasaki’s Twitter feed, where he initiated the Tweetup, doesn’t give out much about his agenda here. This, however, is not his first visit to Mumbai — see his post on an earlier visit in 2006. He’s also well networked with The Indus Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Have fun at the Tweetup.