Sameer Dholakia

Recent appearances

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  The Untold Truths of Venture | Who Wins & Loses in the Next Decade of VC | Sameer Dholakia

  October 19, 2026 · 📺 20VC with Harry Stebbings

  Sameer Dholakia is a Partner @ Bessemer, the first that has just raised $5.75BN across a $1.75BN seed fund and $4BN growth fund. Sameer has led investments into the likes of Anthropic, Fireworks and Legora to name a few. Prior to venture, Sameer was the CEO of SendGrid, taking it from $30M in ARR to over $200M. ----------------------------------------------- Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:59 Why AI Is a Bigger Supercycle Than Cloud and the Internet 04:41 How Bessemer Underwrote Anthropic at a $15BN Valuation 07:37 Why Anthropic Was Bessemer’s Lowest-Voted Deal 08:44 Do Open Models Threaten Fron…

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  Moonshot's Kimi K3 Reshapes the AI Conversation, Says Bessemer Partner

  July 21, 2026 · 📺 Bloomberg Tech

  Moonshot's Kimi K3 has reignited the debate over the future of AI and whether China's open-weight models are closing the gap with OpenAI and Anthropic. Bessemer Venture Partners' Sameer Dholakia joins Bloomberg to discuss why competition is good for AI, where the frontier model makers still have an edge, and why he believes we're only at the beginning of the AI investment cycle. He joins Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Tech." -------- Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube:    / @bloombergtech     Watch the latest full episodes of "Bloomberg Technology" with Caroline Hyde a…

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  Episode 102 | How Sameer Dholakia Led SendGrid to IPO and Exit

  October 28, 2025 · 📺 Techstars

  In this episode of the Give First podcast, Brad Feld sits down with Sameer Dholakia, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and former CEO of SendGrid, the first Techstars company to go public. When Sameer joined SendGrid, growth was slowing and the company was losing money. Under his leadership, it became a $250M business, went public, and was later acquired by Twilio. Sameer shares the story of how his mother’s advice shaped his approach to leadership and why empathy and clarity became his greatest tools as a CEO. From his first days stepping into a nervous team, to navigating “oh sh*t” mome…

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  State of the Cloud: The Cloud AI Era with Bessemer Venture Partners

  October 11, 2024 · 📺 SaaStr AI

  Bessemer Venture Partners is committing $1 billion in capital to back AI-native companies and founders at the bleeding edge. Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners speaks with Julia Chapin, COO at Abridge, Kate Jensen, Head of Revenue at Anthropic, Rami Karabibar, CEO and founder at EvenUp, and Timothy Young, CEO at Jasper, on the impacts of AI on the State of the Cloud. The discussion delves into the integration of AI into SaaS, marketing, healthcare, and legal industries, with a focus on the challenges and opportunities of implementing AI solutions. Key topics include bu…

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  AI foundation models set the stage for Big Tech‘s battle-of-the-century | State of the Cloud 2024

  June 20, 2024 · 📺 Bessemer Venture Partners

  From Bessemer Venture Partners, Janelle Teng, Sameer Dholakia, and Kent Bennett dig into the biggest debate in tech today — who will win the battle over AI foundational models? State of the Cloud 2024 is now out — https://www.bvp.com/atlas/state-of-th... Top takeaways: — Foundation models are seen as essential for downstream AI applications and tooling. — In 2023, foundational model companies captured over 60% of total AI venture funding, raising $23 billion at a market cap of $124 billion. — Big Tech companies (Microsoft, Google, Amazon, NVIDIA, Oracle) are heavily investing in foundationa…

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  What You Need to Change at $10M to Scale to $100M: Sameer Dholakia, Partner Bessemer (Workshop Wed)

  May 24, 2023 · 📺 SaaStr AI

  What you need to change at $10M to scale to $100M with Sameer Dholakia, Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners Every Wednesday we bring you the best speakers in SaaS. 100% LIVE. Sign up for the series: https://bit.ly/3U0IeN0

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  BVP Announces $1B Commitment to Back AI-native Companies

  May 09, 2023 · 📺 Bloomberg Tech

  Sameer Dholakia, partner with Bessemer Venture Partners, joins "Bloomberg Technology" to discuss investing in AI and the details on BVP's new $1 billion commitment from current funds to back AI-native companies. -------- Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg Technology on YouTube:    / @bloombergtech   Watch the latest full episodes of "Bloomberg Technology" with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow here: https://tinyurl.com/ycyevxda Get the latest in tech from Silicon Valley and around the world here: https://www.bloomberg.com/technology Connect with us on... Twitter:   / technology   Facebook:…

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  How to Build a Distinct Workplace Culture - Sameer Dholakia + Holly Liu + Mike Sheridan

  March 05, 2019 · 📺 Startup Grind

  Startup Grind Global Conference 2019 About the Speakers: Sameer Dholakia has over 20 years of experience in successfully bringing high growth, disruptive cloud and enterprise software solutions to market. Prior to joining SendGrid, he served as Group Vice President and General Manager of the Cloud Platforms group at Citrix, driving the company’s product strategy for cloud infrastructure and server virtualization. Holly is a Visiting Partner at Y Combinator. Prior to this she founded and exited the billion-dollar mobile gaming company Kabam - building games for IP such as The Hobbit and Marve…

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  E901 Twilio SendGrid Sameer Dholakia led $30m to $3b acquisition w/marketing, product, team, culture

  February 08, 2019 · 📺 This Week in Startups

  SIGN UP FOR TWIST EPISODES MAILING LIST: http://bit.ly/twistemail E901: Twilio SendGrid CEO Sameer Dholakia shares how he led $30m co. to $3b acquisition with strategic focus on marketing, product & team, embedded values & scalable culture, aligning with the right partners, knowing what great looks like, & expanding platform that’s already delivered over 1 trillion emails to date Follow us on... Twitter:   / twistartups   Jason's Twitter:   / jason   LAUNCH Twitter:   / launch   Instagram:   / twistartups   Jason's Instagam:   / jason   LAUNCH Instagram:   / jason   Connect with Jason on…

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  Competition 101: Getting ahead and staying ahead

  November 16, 2018 · 📺 Web Summit

  Culture Trip's Kris Naudts, Node's Falon Fatemi, SendGrid's Sameer Dholakia and Babson College's Elliott Adams at Web Summit 2018. Innovative, fresh, hungry, forward-thinking. When describing a startup, these are the traits that come to mind. As your company grows and your product or service gets more solid, however, it’s easy to get left behind. Talking on this subject, we have some startups who have longevity on their mind, and some legacy companies who have had to adapt that “startup mentality” to stay on top. Wish you were here? Sign up for 2 for 1 discount code for #WebSummit 2019 now:…

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  Sameer Dholakia, SendGrid - From $0 to IPO at Breakneck Speed

  September 05, 2018 · 📺 Traction

  Traction Conf Vancouver 2018: http://tractionconf.io presented by Launch Academy, Boast.AI, and Victory Square Ventures. SendGrid’s CEO Sameer Dholakia shares learnings from growing and scaling from startup to $100 Million+ revenue to IPO, while maintaining its focus on people and culture. Moderated by Anna Khan, Bessemer Venture Partners.

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  Lessons learned from Trilogy's company culture - Sameer Dholakia, CEO of SendGrid

  August 26, 2017 · 📺 SaaStr AI

  Sameer Dholakia, CEO of SendGrid, answers a question from Ajay Agarwal (Bain Capital Ventures) about what he learned from their culture during his years at Trilogy. Recorded during SaaStr's CoSelling Space Speaker Series 005: May 10, 2017.

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