Meet Senthil Ramachandran of Sprint1

Startup founder and investor Senthil Ramachandran grew up in a small village in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. When he was a child in the 1980s, he had little access to technology. By Ramachandran’s estimation, the Indian state had “100-and-some books and there were no libraries.” In his village there were no newspapers and few televisions.

Yet, it was the place where he began to dream of computers and the endless possibilities created by technology.

“I was always fascinated by books and computers, but we never had computers. TV started trickling in by 1996 and then somehow, I got the computer bug. I never touched a computer, but I was always fascinated with the technology,” he recalled.

It wasn’t until he attended college that he had the opportunity to work with computers. As luck would have it, he discovered he had a special talent for the machines he dreamed of throughout his childhood.

“When I went to college, my entrepreneurial spirit came up. I started building computers and software and selling it to friends. I was also developing a sense of the business and what people’s needs are,” he remembered.

“I was about to graduate in 2004 and my friend’s cousin, who was in London, noticed people playing games on their flip phones. This was the pre-smartphone era and all of them were playing boring snake games with very limited variety. He wanted to build a gaming studio that builds games so he could sell it to carriers in the UK and make money,” he said.

Ramachandran’s friend introduced him to his cousin and the pair made a deal.

“He gave me 500,000 Indian rupees to hire people, rent a space, buy computers and get internet service. He said, ‘do whatever you need to do and then pitch me five ideas by the end of 45 days’… that was an exciting opportunity,” he continued. “I didn’t know a lot of things. We screwed up a lot of things, but it was when the entrepreneurial bug got into me. After that, I have always worked in startups from 2004 onwards.”

Ramachandran worked as a software engineer for several companies before he joined Montage Talent. The Delafield-based human resources technology company was launched in 2007 and led by CEO Kurt Heikkinen, the founder of Forj.

“Without Montage, I don’t think I would be here,” he said candidly. “I started there in 2014…I was fortunate enough to get to a company that was on the verge of hyper-growth. It’s where I met my co-founder, Shaun Bowe… I was at the right time, at the right place, and we grew the company… It was a great team.”

When the company was sold, many of the key employees went on to found new companies. As Ramachandran watched his former colleagues establish new ventures, he saw a need in the market.

“It is unfair for founders to lose a large quantity of their equity just to build their initial product, get some initial traction, prove their hypothesis, then they can raise a larger round. (I saw that) they don’t know any technology person they could trust. Their choices were either to hire somebody who looks like they know computers, hire an agency offshore, or hire employees. All of these options are not viable if you don’t have deep pockets,” he said.

“We realized it was an opportunity for us. We both have a lot of experience building products for startups and we bring a unique perspective,” he continued. “The building is the easiest part- what to build is the hardest part. We help founders to focus on figuring out what to build, what not to build, and how to put in incentive structures in a way that in the end, founders come out ahead. When founders come out ahead, we win.”