PointGuard Ventures

PointGuard Ventures is an early-stage technology investment firm headquartered in Los Altos, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area, founded in 2014 by Krish Panu and T. Peter Thomas — two Silicon Valley venture capital veterans with approximately 35 years of combined venture and operating experience. The firm brands itself after the basketball point guard metaphor: PointGuard acts as the team advisor and coach, while the founder and CEO runs the plays and drives execution. Its thesis centers on backing entrepreneurs who leverage converging technologies to create entirely new markets or solve existing problems dramatically more cost effectively. PointGuard targets Series A and early Series B companies that have achieved product-market validation, a defined sales strategy, and potential IP protection. The firm deploys initial checks of $2 million to $10 million per company, with reserves to reach $10 million or more in select deals. Sector coverage spans cloud computing, SaaS, data analytics, green technology, point-of-care medical devices, semiconductors, networking, and hardware. The firm launched with a $50 million fund and has made 30 disclosed investments. The portfolio has produced 2 IPOs — FormFactor (NASDAQ, June 2003) and Cirrus Logic (NASDAQ) — and 20 acquisitions. The most recent exit was Prevedere, acquired by Board in November 2024. PointGuard keeps a deliberately concentrated portfolio, which allows both Panu and Thomas to be deeply engaged with each management team. The firm provides hands-on coaching across strategy, sales architecture, and operational execution — the 'mentor capital' model that distinguishes PointGuard from funds that take a more passive board-observer approach. This depth of engagement is particularly valued at the Series A stage, when founding teams face their most consequential go-to-market decisions.