Ram Shriram- Man with the Midas touch

Ram Shriram is an Indian-born venture capitalist based out of Silicon Valley. He is also the founder of a venture capital firm Sherpalo ventures. Ram has been well known as an investor who invested in Google Inc when search engines were an unknown area. He has held a senior position at Amazon.com where he worked for the CEO, Jeff Bezos. Ram came to Amazon.com when Amazon.com acquired Junglee where Ram was the President. Before Junglee, Ram was a part of the executive team at Netscape, the iconic browser company which can be termed revolutionary in the history of Internet. Much has been said about Netscape in the infamous book "The world is flat" by Thomas Friedman.

Ram Shriram was born in India. He obtained his graduation in India. He also got an MBA from Stephen M. Ross School of Business. Ram is media shy and is rarely seen on Television. His sparkling mind can be compared to that of other visionaries such as John von Neumann. Ram Shriram is one of the most influential people of our time with his investments in companies which have changed the world significantly.

As per interviews given by Ram, he aspired to be a weather forecaster at the age of 12. This indicates his love for complex systems. Selecting few companies from thousands of business plans and requests is no easy task. It can be as complex as weather forecasting. These kinds of systems have been modeled in the form of differential equations where a small change in the initial conditions can change the solution to the equation in a drastic way. The idea of this has been well documented in an area of study called Chaos Theory.

Ram Shriram is a humble personality. He talks about his beginnings with utmost frankness. He has supposedly authored a manifesto known as "Ram's book of mistakes". This is not published by Ram, but is in the form of sermons given to startups where Ram invests. He also imparts his wisdom at any talks he gives at educational institutions. If he desires, he can publish the book. However, he seems to be keeping and passing on the knowledge of his experience in the form of advice to companies. Any startup would be fortunate to have Ram on its board. He has aptly been referred by many as "the man with the Midas touch". He has also invested in some major internet business in India such as Naukri.com (A job search company in India), Futurebazaar (Online portal of a leading retail chain), and Cleartrip (online portal for ticket bookings in India), Inmobi (Mobile Ad Network). His current investments have been in some well known companies in the high tech space such as Zoomin, Nextjump, Inmobi etc.