Future-proofing your career | CIO

All through his nine decades as chief electronic and technology officer for JetBlue Airways, Eash Sundaram normally spoke of approaches to “future-proof” the airline organization, which is notoriously vulnerable to perilously thin income margins and recurrent bankruptcies.

For JetBlue, upcoming-proofing intended diversifying past passenger flights by investing in journey and hospitality tech startups. So, when JetBlue Technological know-how Ventures introduced in 2016, Sundaram took on a twin part as founder and chairman of the financial investment committee.

“JetBlue Ventures has now experienced 3 thriving exits in a five-year-old fund, which is a pretty good consequence,” claims Sundaram, referring to portfolio companies that ended up marketed or issued IPOs. He retired from the airline past calendar year to concentrate on undertaking investing and serve as an working government at Tailwind Cash, a mid-current market private equity company. He serves on the boards of a number of other companies as properly, from startups to a $17B Fortune 200 global provide chain service provider. 

His longtime affinity with the VC world, as it turned out, was long term-proofing his very own job technique.  

“It’s so satisfying and inspirational to do the job with these early-stage startup founders. You experience so fortunate to be portion of their desire,” Sundaram states of this future chapter in his doing the job life, which incorporates starting off his personal investment decision fund Utpata Ventures, named for the Sanskrit term for defying gravity and traveling higher.

I caught up recently with this CIO Hall of Famer-turned-VC tech trader to speak about doing the job with VCs and early-phase organizations, serving on community boards, and launching his have expense fund.

Maryfran Johnson: Further than serving as beta clients for new tech goods, what positive aspects can CIOs convey to the globe of VCs and tech buyers?

Eash Sundaram: Most of the business owners I have fulfilled in startups aren’t as professional in business enterprise as substantially as they are young and energetic. They know how to convey a large notion to a particular stage, but they just can’t translate that into execution. After you’re inside of as an investor, you deliver knowledge on how to scale up a product. You also provide a much larger-company integration mentality, and as a technologist, you’ve been fingers-on in offering the variety of IT accomplishment that fuels company expansion. There are so quite a few roles a CIO can perform as an investor and a startup accelerator.

JetBlue Technologies Ventures has thrived since 2016, funding 40 startups and working with dozens of founders and business people. What were the major lessons you discovered through your 5 years as chairman of the board?

My No. 1 lesson learned was that you’ve obtained to believe that in the founder and the vision. You do not alter that vision, which is something a lot of traders will consider to do. People today with money aren’t constantly intelligent! Entrepreneurs believe out-of-the box, and your occupation is to mentor them so they can mature and scale the business enterprise. We figured out that in the early days exactly where we attempted to modify the scope of a solution, and we shouldn’t have.

No. 2 lesson: Your job as an trader in a venture fund is to obtain possibilities to enable and to scale the firm by leveraging your connections. Not each individual investor has the correct connections to support a company improve. VC styles usually have much more slender networks. The special opportunity you have as a CIO or CEO trader is to leverage your broader connections. For case in point, we had a partnership ecosystem at JB Ventures. We could deliver in other airlines and hospitality makes to search at our investments and make introductions to support portfolio providers scale up.

No. 3: Know when you’re ready to be a shopper of your merchandise or your expenditure. These young providers mature otherwise. In some circumstances, the products and solutions we invested in may perhaps not be business-prepared for a extensive time. You may consider you want to be first, but you don’t have to use every little thing you invest in.

You also provide as a director on two general public company boards, just one of them being SolarWinds, the network software provider so catastrophically hacked very last yr. What was that working experience like? 

I am chairman of the cyber and technological know-how board committee, so I led the committee that assisted with the investigation. It was absolutely a pretty distressing six months. We experienced an superb staff of Solarians and third-get together specialists who guided the board as a result of the study course of the investigation. Underneath the management of our new CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna, we have produced considerable progress in strengthening our interior landscape, embracing “secure by design” product rules, and driving sizeable advancements in purchaser satisfaction. We did that by staying transparent, providing them with the required tools to mitigate any dangers, and self esteem in our ability to secure their infrastructure. The CEO (and his team) rebuilt the full platform in a lot less than a 12 months. SolarWinds shopper retention stays really substantial, which speaks so very well of the way the company handled the disaster.

What lessons did you take away from the SolarWinds hack?

People think most cyber incidents are internally targeted, but in a connected environment like ours, technological know-how goes so deeply into quite a few parts of the business, the magnitude and breadth of a offer chain attack is a lot bigger than you would imagine.

One particular of the best outcomes from this kind of incidents is how it drives simplicity into your infrastructure. You have to remain latest on software package upgrades and lower contact details. If you have 5 systems accomplishing 1 factor, you maintain only the one. And you go to the cloud, which presents a better level of sophistication and protection beyond what you can regulate yourself.

What systems are you investing in with your possess venture fund?

I invested in 7 startups previous calendar year, in cybersecurity, conversational AI, B2B logistics, and new generation cloud enhancement. Most of them are Sequence A amount businesses now.

You enjoy a diverse part when you are thinking about beginning a undertaking fund. It is major money, so the conclusions you make are superior effect. Angel expenditure is a most risky proposition, but I like investing in good people—and I like to be initial!

This article 1st appeared in CIO’s Job Strategist publication. Subscribe now!