Prathik focuses on growth-stage investments in AI infrastructure, defense, and physical infrastructure at Lightspeed. “I love being in the mess of things with founders who want to build generational companies,” he says, “especially those driving step-function changes in how our physical and digital worlds operate”.

Growing up in the Detroit suburbs, Prathik was immersed in a blend of industrial innovation and entrepreneurship. His father, an auto engineer, instilled a “root cause everything” mindset; while his mother ran an eyebrow threading salon from their home, teaching him the hustle of dealing with customers from a young age.

His path into the venture world began not in a boardroom, but at local hackathons like MHacks. He quickly realized his strengths leaned more commercial than purely technical. Spending his teen years working for startups in the Detroit ecosystem and volunteering for Detroit Startup Week fostered a lifelong obsession with technology and the builders behind it.

Before joining Lightspeed, Prathik evaluated late-stage growth, public-market, and control buy-out investments at Permira, a global growth PE firm. There, he split his time working on software and AI services opportunities, partnering with executive teams to help scale their businesses through their next critical stages of growth.

Today, his investment philosophy is rooted in restraint. “I approach investing with a mindset similar to the Hippocratic oath to ‘do no harm’,” he explains. “It is easy to step into a startup with a rigid playbook, but that often lacks nuance and can inadvertently disrupt the very magic that makes the company special. We invest initially because we believe in the founders and their vision. Our job is to help foster that vision in a way that is best for the business. It is always more pull than push.”

When he is not working with founders, Prathik can be found visiting art museums , meandering to wine bars across NYC, or fighting for his life on the golf course.