Analyst Panel: Where Are You Placing Your Money in Enterprise Tech?
The stock market has seen records after records, but while the Dow is way up during the pandemic, not all enterprise tech companies have enjoyed the upward ride. Cloud providers have gained of course, but legacy tech not so much. If a company’s stock price reflects its customer’s sentiment on its future prospectus then enterprise IT is restructuring for the digital enterprise. In this panel, we discuss the new landscape of enterprise IT suppliers that are helping IT organizations build, run and secure their digital enterprises.
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Paul Silverstein is a managing director and senior research analyst and covers telecom & networking equipment. Prior to joining Cowen in 2013, Mr. Silverstein was a director in Credit Suisse’s equity research department, covering the communications infrastructure industry. Before that, he was a senior analyst in equity research at Robertson Stephens and at Needham & Co. Prior to becoming a securities analyst, Mr. Silverstein practiced corporate and securities law as an associate at Weil Gotshal & Manges and at Pryor Cashman Sherman & Flynn. He holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA from Columbia Business School, and a JD from Cornell Law School.
Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers – the round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently…”.
Guru loves these lines from that classic Apple Ad because he believes few things better describe those with the singular goal to create market-leading platforms with outsized impact.
After his last startup was acquired (Nuova Systems acquired by Cisco), Guru joined Lightspeed as an investor in 2012 working with the partnership on investments in Zscaler (IPO), Avere
Guru believed the core idea behind Avi Networks was so powerful that he joined the founding team as the 4th co-founder. In just a few years, they built out the business from an idea to a platform that served over 20% of Fortune 50 businesses, among hundreds of other customers. Avi Networks was acquired by VMware in 2019.
After his entrepreneurial journey, Guru decided to focus his time and energy back on venture and returned to his Lightspeed roots, using the lessons from his founding experience to help early-stage founders.
“I’ve been in startups through most of my career. My operational experience spans sitting in a room with my co-founders and not much else, to building billion dollar run rate products,” said Guru. “During this journey, I’ve run product management, marketing, strategy, and have even been the early stage sales rep cold-calling customers. I bring this experience to every interaction I have with founding teams – a deep understanding of technology and how to monetize it.”
Guru primarily invests in Enterprise sectors such as security, DevOps, observability/ops tools, cloud infrastructure and application development. “These areas are seeing extremely rapid innovation and offer significant value creation opportunities for both entrepreneurs and investors,” said Guru.
Natarajan ‘Subu’ Subrahmanyan, CFA is a Principal at AO Asset Management. Subu has over 15 years of equity research experience in the technology sector and focuses on hardware, semiconductor and security sectors at AO. Prior to joining AO, Subu spent 12 years at The Juda Group as an equity research analyst covering the communications equipment and network security and before that was lead analyst for networking at Goldman Sachs. Subu has been featured on the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Street Analyst List, and ranked in the Institutional Investor polls. He holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University and a B.S in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Madras University in India.
Rod is the senior equity analyst for the Hardware and Communications Technology sector in Global Investment Research. He joined Goldman Sachs as a managing director in 2017. Prior to joining the firm, Rod was the senior analyst for IT Hardware and Networking Technology at JP Morgan in
North America. Previously, he covered Communications Technology stocks for JP Morgan based in London. Earlier in his career, Rod covered Telecom and Cable stocks in Europe at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, and prior to that, he was employed in both technical and managerial positions at AT&T in both the US and France. Rod earned a BS in Electrical Engineering from Kansas State University and an MBA with a focus in finance at INSEAD. He also holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.
