Alex joined NEA in 2020 and is a Partner focused on growth-stage investments across enterprise, fintech, and consumer. He is a board observer of Brale, DeltaStream, Grid, Snowplow, and Weaviate and also works closely with Courtyard, Datafold, Merge, MoonPay, QuoteWell, and VAST Data, among others. Sharata was previously an investor at Vista Equity Partners focused on mature enterprise software companies. Prior to becoming an investor, he was a co-founder of Fractal, a mobile app security company that was acquired in 2017.
How would you describe the companies you look to partner with?
I focus mostly on growth-stage investments (Series C and beyond) in companies that are inflecting beyond product-market fit, scaling their go-to-market engines, continuing to innovate at a rapid clip, and widening their moats thanks to unfair competitive advantages. The power law tells us that the lion’s share of value accrues to a handful of category leaders. These are the “N of 1” companies we look to back—they are truly generational, capitalizing on big trends and capable of creating billions of dollars in market cap as enduring public companies one day.
What qualities do you look for in a founder?
If I had to boil it down to one thing, an unquenchable desire to reshape the universe to their preferences. While this desire can manifest itself in different ways, it tends to be a shared character trait among many of the world’s most iconic founders, leaders, and dent makers.
How does NEA approach investing across stages?
I believe our deep sector expertise and thesis-driven coverage model make us great at identifying category creators that one day grow into category leaders. Our “one team” approach enables a constantly spinning flywheel of idea exchange between our early and growth-stage practices, allowing us to nurture multiyear relationships with founders prior to investing in a growth round.
You’ve been a founder yourself. Describe how that experience has given you empathy for the founders you work with.
Starting a business is no joke. There are times when it can feel like one of the most rewarding experiences, but a lot of the time it can feel like one of the most daunting and unforgiving journeys you’ll ever embark on. Now that I sit on the other side of the table, I always reflect back on what it’s like going through the founder journey—and I try to ensure it never feels lonely for the founders we are fortunate enough to partner with.
Both of your parents were computer scientists. How did they influence your interest in technology?
My parents programmed FORTRAN on punch cards back in college, and they joked that debugging a simple program took multiple days because they had to physically drive a stack of punch cards to a separate campus to execute code. I remember hearing that story in 2007—the same year the iPhone SDK was announced, forever changing the face of app development. Fast forward to today: we’ve seen massive improvements in development tools for software and data engineers, and the landscape will look completely different in another 15 years. My parents’ stories put into perspective how technology grows in leaps and bounds and how innovation is one of the strongest, most unrelenting forces on the planet.
What’s a quote that inspires you?
Billie Jean King said, “Pressure is a privilege.” Pressure has a negative connotation. It’s stress-inducing and causes discomfort, but what’s often overlooked is that pressure is usually accompanied by an opportunity to do something extraordinary.
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“Our 'one team' approach enables a constantly spinning flywheel of idea exchange between our early and growth-stage practices, allowing us to nurture multiyear relationships with founders prior to investing in a growth round.”
