Based in Menlo Park, Bejul views himself as an entrepreneur in the venture business. He co-leads Lightspeed and partners with founders building market-defining companies, including Neko Health, Suno, Sierra, Whatnot, and Beacon Software. Across three decades as a founder, operator, and investor, he has developed a particular affinity for people and companies that don’t fit neatly into existing categories or conform to existing patterns.
“Pattern recognition is lazy,” he says. “It rests on an assumption that the future looks the same as the past.” If you’re in the business of backing exceptions in a rapidly changing market, he believes, you have to think from first principles and find people capable of leaning into ambiguity and creating markets rather than simply competing for a share of existing ones.
His conversations with founders often begin with a deliberately simple question: Why are you doing this?
That answer tells him more than a polished pitch ever could.
Resisting conformity applies to venture capital as well. Alongside co-founder Ravi Mhatre, he has helped make Lightspeed a leading investment firm at the frontier of AI, where the technology is rewriting both the size of the opportunity and the playbook for pursuing it. He looks for founders who value a partner who’s willing to think alongside them about where technology is heading and how ambitious a company can become.
After the London School of Economics and Harvard Business School, Bejul joined a venture-backed startup as an early employee. He later moved into investing at General Catalyst, only to leave venture behind in 2003 to start a company of his own. He brought that vantage point to Lightspeed in 2008, establishing the firm’s India practice from the ground up before helping open its Southeast Asia and European practices. Along the way he led early investments in India Energy Exchange (NSE: IEX) and OYO, returning more than $1 billion to investors and earning recognition as India’s top venture investor in 2019.
Bejul still measures the career less by individual deals than by the relationships that have endured.
“They’re really the most precious part of this business,” he says.
- Favorite Album My 18 year old daughter’s ‘Chill’ playlist on Spotify.
- Favorite Book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.
- Favorite Hobby I used to be a competitive amateur golfer, and still learn a lot about myself, and others, on the golf course.
