Sunil Dhaliwal, Founder of Amplify Partners, on Lessons from 27 Years in VC
We The Builders by Suffiyan Malik w/ Sunil Dhaliwal · · Podcast · 1:58:10
"Fastly was an introduction through a former CEO of mine, Jesse Robbins … Jesse said whenever Artur Bergman quits his job, he's going to start something. I would back that guy … Artur is fucking brilliant. Believe what he says … And that is probably the single biggest success in the history of the firm."
My friend Sunil Dhaliwal has proven to be one of the most successful investors in our space. Two far-ranging hours on We The Builders, from the dot-com bubble to where the AI boom is really constrained to building Amplify. Go listen to the whole thing.
This is an extraordinary two-hour conversation with my friend Sunil Dhaliwal, who has proven to be one of the most successful investors in our space. He goes far and wide here, from the dot-com bubble to the AI boom, early-stage firm investment dynamics, and why he built Amplify in the first place. It is a really great interview, and worth a listen or a watch.
Along the way he tells some stories about a few introductions I made for him during a particularly exciting time in infrastructure. Sunil led my Series B at Chef while I was CEO and also still Chair of the Velocity Conference. Sunil made it clear he wanted to run (and pay for) the bar at my speaker parties, and expected me to introduce him to the best people.
That night I introduced him to my friends Artur Bergman and Simon Wistow who were just founding Fastly. This, of course, turned out to be one of Sunil’s (and my) best investments. (Sunil also met the founders of Datadog at Velocity the same way.) Definitely a trick I learned to use myself over the years.
One painful moment from this part of the interview was Suffiyan being surprised that “O’Reilly did conferences”. Yes, they did… and we all miss them.
Long and excellent conversation for anyone who is interested in venture. Worth every minute. Go listen.
Also Mentioned
Further reading
- What investors look for in AI startups — My own talk on what I look for now, the same instinct Sunil describes: back the builders who live the problem.
- What I invest in — The thesis in my words, carried forward from the infrastructure era in this episode to AI developer tools today.
- Best investments and exits so far — Fastly is one of them. The introductions Sunil credits me with here turned into a few of these.
- From the NYSE floor — The operator-to-investor arc, from running operations to backing the companies that build the tools.