Kishen Mangat is a General Partner at Boulder Ventures who co-founded BroadHop (acquired by Cisco) and later served as VP/GM for Mobility & Automation at Cisco, giving him rare experience both building telco software companies from scratch and running large-scale 5G and network automation businesses inside a major equipment vendor. He leads Boulder Ventures' enterprise 5G investment strategy and sits on boards of companies like Spectrum Effect and ng-voice, focusing specifically on cloud-native telco software and next-generation networking rather than taking a generalist venture approach.

• A strong focus on the rollout and commercialization of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 technologies across various industries. Emphasizing how ultra low latency and flexible private networks unlock massive innovation is a smart angle. You might mention the excitement over the T-Mobile standalone 5G network launch or how edge solutions can create safer in person experiences at large sports and entertainment venues.
• Dedicated to helping network operators and service providers improve their profit margins through automation and software modernization. Infrastructure solutions that allow companies to serve more data at lower capital costs fit perfectly here. A great conversation starter is the mentioned partnership with Qwilt and Digital Alpha to disrupt the commercial content delivery market using an as a service model.
• Passionate about closing the digital divide and bringing reliable connectivity to rural and underserved areas. Positioning your startup as a way to connect the unconnected builds immediate common ground. For example, you could bring up the efforts to provide affordable software network agreements to rural broadband providers like Midco or the collaborative initiatives aimed at expanding internet access on native lands.
• Interested in cloud native and open source networking architectures that move the telecommunications industry away from traditional hardware constraints. If your product involves open standards or artificial intelligence networking, this is highly relevant. An interesting specific to reference is the vocal advocacy for open radio access networks and the use of open source software to build highly scalable data centers.