Assertion Not checkable as stated
Reddy: SoftBank Vision Fund was actually highly disciplined and valuation-conscious
“While I know that that is the general perception that, you know, SoftBank comes in and gives more valuation you know, we were very, very, very valuation conscious. Deep Nishar made sure that he instilled a very good discipline in terms of how we invest. There …”
Opinion
Reddy: Silicon Graphics was the 1990s equivalent of OpenAI and Nvidia
“And Silicon Graphics at that time was what the open AI of today is. Yes. Nvidia, open AI, any one of those”
Disclosure
Reddy will personally back Pear Therapeutics founder Corey McCann again
“And by the way, this is a company that if Cordy starts another company tomorrow, I will personally still invest dollars in him because that's part of the founder journey, right?”
Assertion Supported
Reddy: Good Technology had a half-billion dollar exit to Motorola
“This was good technology Kleiner Perkins benchmark were investors John Doerr, Bruce Dunleavy were on the board acquired by Motorola. And it was a half a billion dollar exit for the company.”
Disclosure
Reddy passed on pre-IPO Google, doubting the search engine market size
“When I was at in, I interviewed with Google during its pre-IPO times. And this during my MBA. Right. And I walked away thinking, how big can a search engine really be? Okay. Famous. So I, you know, I don't even think I pursued it like really hard. I just explo…”
Disclosure
Facebook India's initial vision: 100M users, 100M revenue, 100M people touched
“Our first vision for the India market was articulated as a hundred, hundred, hundred, where we wanted to have a hundred million people on the platform, a hundred million in revenue, and a hundred million people that we touched through our community efforts.”
Assertion Partly supported
Reddy: Facebook Was Hiring 10,000+ Employees Annually by 2017
“Because by that time, Facebook was hiring 10,000 plus people every single year.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
One of Facebook India's first seven hires was for Learning & Development
“The first seven hires of Facebook was someone from L&D, which was a learning that came from a lot of our leaders coming from Google, and what is it that they thought was important from building a company and an organization.”
Disclosure
Reddy personally interviewed Facebook India's first 100 hires regardless of level
“I committed to personally being part of the interview process for the first hundred hires, no matter what their level is.”
Assertion Supported
Reddy: SoftBank Vision Fund's Minimum Check Size Was $100 Million
“When I saw what SoftBank was doing their minimum check size was a hundred million.”
Disclosure
Reddy: Deployed Nearly $1B at SoftBank Across a $5B+ Portfolio
“Deployed almost a billion dollars of new investment, had an overall portfolio of over five billion, led their first quantum computing investment, their first additive manufacturing investment, their first mental wellness investment, did gaming, web three, bloc…”
Disclosure
SoftBank backed quantum computing firm IonQ before its $2B IPO
“They went public at two billion and we came in before that.”
Assertion Supported
Pear Therapeutics created the first FDA-approved digital therapeutic for addiction
“They solved, they were the first FDA approved product for addressing opioid use disorder, substance use disorder, chronic insomnia.”
Assertion Supported
Meta's campus sign keeps the old Sun Microsystems logo on the back
“Even today, if you go to the Facebook office you will see one hack away, a big sign that has the Meta logo and behind the Meta sign is the original Sun Microsystems sign, because Mark wants to have that as a constant reminder about how it is so important to ke…”
Assertion Supported
Reddy: Under 10% of AI and blockchain founders are women
“One of the stats that I heard was, you know, less than single digit percentage of deep tech founders People working on AI blockchain are women.”
Assertion Contradicted
Reddy: Women face a 39% mid-career workforce drop-off
“There is a 39% drop off mid-career for women. If we have that kind of drop off mid-career, how will we ever get to 50 50 at the top level.”
Assertion Contradicted
Reddy: Wrote the programming code for classic engineering textbook 'Let Us C'
“If you pick up a letter C book, you'll see the acknowledgement for Kirtika Venkatraman, which is my maiden name for all of the programs that were written in that book.”
Disclosure
Reddy took a 40% pay cut post-MBA to become a startup PM
“I decided because I was going to go to product management to a startup, I went from being a director of engineering to being an individual contributor product manager, taking a 40% pay cut because that's what you do when you go to a startup and the payout is i…”
Assertion Supported
Reddy: Orkut was the dominant social network prior to Facebook's India expansion
“It wasn't a public company, and by the way, Orkut was the dominant social media network at that time as well. It was not Facebook”
Disclosure
Reddy co-founded F-Seven seed fund with six female Facebook executives
“In that time, I actually started a seed fund with six other female Facebook executives. It was called F-Seven. And just like you have hashtag angels, this was our equivalent where we were seeing the dearth of women in investing and wanted to so we pulled toget…”
Kirthiga Reddy