“Manan is a founding partner of Unshackled Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund created to support foreign-born entrepreneurs. Unshackled Ventures is supported by nearly 80 investors, including Brad Feld, First Round Capital, Jerry Yang and the Emerson Collective, founded by Laurene Powell Jobs. Prior to Unshackled Ventures, Manan ran marketing for ed-tech startup Kno that raised over $90M of funding from top VC’s including Andreessen Horowitz, First Round Capital and Floodgate. The company was acquired by Intel in 2013. Before Kno, Manan was an investment banker at the Royal Bank of Canada, with his most notable deal being the $1.9B acquisition of Skype lead by Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz in 2009 — later sold to Microsoft for $8.5B.

Most recently, Manan was invited by the White House and the U.S. State Department to speak at President Obama’s annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit held at Stanford University. He’s an active mentor to startups at Stanford University and has been an op-ed contributor in the Huffington Post, ReCode and been featured in the WSJ, Forbes, Bloomberg, Financial Times, CNN and many other national press outlets.

As a first generation American, Manan knows his life is inextricably linked to immigrants. He is a firm believer that immigrants are the heartbeat of American entrepreneurship and is excited about unleashing entrepreneurs to innovate and create opportunities for themselves and society.”