Manish Kothari

Prior to his role at First Spark, Manish was the President of SRI International, a large, renowned research lab in Silicon Valley that has been the birthplace of many deep-tech companies such as Intuitive Surgical, Nuance and Siri. In that role, he also oversaw SRI Ventures, where he incubated and invested in over 25 startups and saw many exits to companies like J&J, Google, Unity, Doordash, etc. He has also been an advisor on translational programs with the US Government, including agencies such as NASA and IES.

Prior to SRI, Manish was a serial entrepreneur in medtech hardware and software, with successful exits – his first company continues to exist after two decades with annual revenues north of $500M.

Manish has a postdoc from UCSF in Medical Physics, a PhD from Cornell in Bioengineering and undergraduate from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in Aerospace Engineering. 

Manish is passionate about translation of technology from the lab to practice.