About

Alok Nandan, PhD is a seasoned entrepreneur, investor, and meditator with over 23 years of relevant experience in the field of computer science. He has a proven track record of building and helping founders in enterprise software, with deep domain expertise in enterprise/data infrastructure and developer tools. Alok has authored multiple patents and 30+ peer-reviewed articles in cloud and distributed systems, and has spoken at several industry events. Alok is currently the Co-Founder and Managing Partner at First Rays Venture Partners, a seed-stage investment firm that specializes in B2B enterprise software themes disrupting the Enterprise Stack. His focus is on leveraging the new disruption in software stack triggered by the end of Moore's law. Alok was previously a Partner at Emergent Ventures, where he made pre-seed investments in companies such as Arcion.io (cloud-native database replication) and Acceldata.io (data observability). Prior to his venture capital career, Alok spent 15 years as an operating executive in the enterprise software industry, working at companies such as Microsoft Azure, Salesforce, and YuMevideo. He was the Director of Product Management at Tempo AI, where he led the development of the Tempo Smart Calendar, a venture-backed product incubated at SRI. Alok's expertise also includes machine learning, AI, and data science. Alok holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as an Executive Education Program in Marketing from Northwestern University and a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT. He also attended St Xavier's for his secondary education. Alok's current portfolio of investments at First Rays includes Arcion.io, Blotout.io, Peritus.ai, Okulis, Dendron, and Arnica.io. His passion for meditation and mindfulness complements his work in the fast-paced world of venture capital, making him a well-rounded and insightful investor.