Sunil Nagaraj insists on understanding a technology in depth before investing, often hosting small groups of engineers and researchers at his home to talk shop, and he has built his firm as a solo investor with a narrow, consistent focus rather than expanding into a broader team. He looks for founders who show a long-standing passion for their field, has a personal, long-term interest in space that predates his investing career, uses his own step-by-step approach to how founders should pitch him, and draws on his earlier experience building a machine-learning dating startup to think carefully about where automation actually helps versus where human judgment still matters most.