Hi! My name is Noorjit Sidhu. I’m excited to connect and answer any questions that I can be helpful with for this week’s AMA. I hope you are all retaining balance and staying safe in this environment.
I’m currently an investor at Plug and Play Ventures, based in the Bay Area. We’re a global early-stage tech investor. Last year, we had five of our investments become unicorns, with the most notable exit being Honey, a startup we invested in the first round of, which exited to one of our older portfolio companies, PayPal.
I grew up in Union City, CA, a town of primarily working- and middle-class families that had the classic setup of one public high school, one library, and many fast food joints. Earlier on in my life, my ambition was to become a Professor. I really liked the elements of research and the idea of spending all my time trying to find and advance truth. After college in San Diego, I ended up pursuing a JD at The University of Chicago Law School, where my focus for the first half of the program, clinics, and internships was to solve the social problems I grew up around. It yielded some very compelling experiences -- publishing an international compendium on tuberculosis and human rights that I traveled to India to present, representing a Holocaust survivor in a Medicare hearing, and a lot of little victories that I imagined could make a difference in the fields of immigration and small businesses. After the hard self-discovery that being a lawyer wasn’t the long-term profession that would honor my values and interests, I pivoted toward tech and venture. My first experience was with the university’s innovation fund, where we made pre-seed considerations of which research to commercialize and fund as a startup. I went on to work for a few different funds in the Bay Area, New York, and Chicago, as well as a startup studio.
I’m really interested today in where venture doesn’t work well, what the future of the asset class and adjacent ones may be, and of course helping entrepreneurs in their stories with any funding and insights. Old industries, and also problems that affect our day-to-day and are easy for my family & childhood friends to resonate with - work, healthcare, financial well-being - are what I focus on.
Hopefully I can help you and learn something along the way as well!
Republic Venture Partner AMA (Ask Me Anything) is a weekly series. Feel free to ask questions in the discussion section below.* He will be answering questions Thursday 8/06 through Sunday 8/09 so submit your questions now!
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This educational article is provided by Republic to help its users understand this area of the market, it should not be construed as investment advice as it is impersonal, disinterested and was produced by Republic for Republic’s users, without remuneration received or expected.