By Founders,
For Founders
We believe the best investors to partner with are those that have been through your journey before.
That’s why everyone at Carya — even our LPs — are founders and operators at heart. When we partner with you, we make it our mission to accelerate your progress to building a transformational B2B business.
Because active capital is better capital.
Thesis
We separate our thesis into two main parts:
Investing - we do not invest in iterations of products or markets, but rather in the teams that can create whole new paradigms. We look for opportunities in rapidly changing markets - be it led by a technological, behavioral or societal change. Our founders drive themselves towards changing environments with an unfair advantage and iterate rapidly to build strong moats that defend their business.
Operating - the main reason why we started Carya is because we saw a disconnect in modern VCs. We see it too often that VCs will promise to help you build your business but have never done so themselves. Everyone at Carya has been through the journey, which is why we feel responsible to help you navigate yours. If we do not feel like we can help you, we do not believe we deserve a spot on your cap table.
Portfolio
Team
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Sharath joined Sanas in 2022 as COO & Co-Founder. Previously, he was the Co-Founder and CRO of ObserveAI and was responsible for hyper growth from inception to unicorn in under 5 years. During Sharath’s tenure, ObserveAI crossed over $15M+ in ARR, grown to over 300 employees and became a market leader in the contact center AI domain. Sharath has raised over $500M in VC, was a part of Y Combinator and is passionate about helping founders on their journey.
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Sai founded an ASR (automatic speech recognition) startup, Ungarble that was acquired in 2019. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Sai played market expansion/GTM consultant roles at multiple startups including Spottabl (HR tech) and PacketZoom (Acquired by Roblox). She led global expansion and customer success teams at Practo, Fiberlink (now IBM), Mobstac and Akamai. She is also the founder and CEO of InKindOnly, a Bay Area-based nonprofit that facilitates donations other than cash from local businesses and HNWI to grassroots social nonprofits in the area. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Engineering and a Post Graduate Diploma in Intellectual Property Rights and Laws from National Law School Of India University.
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Marty is President and Board Member of Sanas and has over 25 years of experience in contact centers and enterprises. He has built and sold numerous BPOs across the globe as well as served as advisors to many startups in the Bay Area including Observe AI, Symtrain, Minerva CQ, Humantic and many others. Marty's experience and ability to accurately evaluate technology in real world applications gives Carya the expertise to make bold investments with sound use cases. Further, Marty serves as an expert operator to help further our portfolio companies’ progress and GTM growth.
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Andy has held a decorated career as the Founder and CEO of Alorica, a market-leading BPO with over 100,000+ employees in 16 countries servicing 250+ enterprise customers. After moving to Executive Chairman in April 2022, Andy has joined Carya as a partner to specialize on advancing the portfolio companies’ GTM efforts, access to design partners and close executive coaching and mentorship. Andy has been a recognized business leader in both enterprise and startups alike, bringing a vast network including deal flow, access to institutional investors, and technology leaders.
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Andrés is a co-founder at Sanas, an 80+ person Speech AI company, which he started while studying at Stanford University. Having raised over $60MM in VC and built the initial business around Sanas, he holds strong expertise in the B2B and Enterprise AI spaces. Having been an active investor and advisor around idea-stage startups in the Bay Area, he’s seen the 0-to-1 stage in multiple iterations and can help founders replicate hyper growth environments.