Ram Shriram started Sherpalo in January, 2000, with the goal of applying his wealth of operating and company building experience to promising early stage ventures. As a technology industry insider for over 25 years he has worked in companies large and small across all functional areas and through fluctuating business cycles. He is always eager to roll up his sleeves and work closely with founding teams on the challenging issues that confront and sometimes confound early stage ventures.
Ram’s knowledge of and advice on issues ranging from raising venture capital, key management hiring, making the right product choices and defining and adapting the business model to changing market conditions can help you to secure early customer wins, build momentum from a standing start, and generate international growth.
A hallmark of Ram’s success is the ability to create the right DNA for a young growth company with a focus on revenue and profitability, by establishing a virtuous cycle of talented employees/owners and happy customers/users. Ram enjoys the process of turning founders’ dreams into successful businesses and takes a long term view that serves as a guidepost for decision making. Ram is thoughtful, cerebral, easy to communicate with, deeply committed to the tasks he undertakes, and has a keen intuitive sense for what works in the marketplace.
Ram has partnered with the venture capital industry and its many famous and successful members all across Silicon Valley. Because of his domain and market expertise, he brings a unique value to the building of companies with successful outcomes that fits well with the value offered by venture capital firms.
In 2008 and 2009 Ram was ranked number three on the Forbes list of top tech dealmakers, and in 2007, number six on top ten kingmakers in tech by Business 2.0 magazine. Ram is a Charter Member of TiE (The Indus Entrepreneurs).
Immediately prior to founding Sherpalo, Ram served as an officer of Amazon.com working for Jeff Bezos, founder & CEO. Ram came to Amazon.com in August, 1998, when Amazon acquired Junglee, an online comparison shopping firm of which Ram was president. While at Amazon, Ram helped grow the customer base during its early high growth phase in 1998/1999. Before Junglee and Amazon, Ram was a member of the Netscape executive team, joining them in 1994, before they shipped products or posted revenue. He drove the many partnerships and channels that Netscape employed to get massive distribution for its browser and server products during those now legendary early days of the Internet.
Ram is a founding Board member of Google Inc. and 247-inc.com. Ram also serves on the Boards of PaperlessPost.com, Zazzle.com, and http://www.stumbleupon.com/. Ram is on the Board of trustees of Stanford University.