Backing Technical Founders with Amplify Partners Founder Sunil Dhaliwal | Founding the Fund 2

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Sunil Dhaliwal, founder and managing partner of Amplify Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on backing technical founders building infrastructure software, developer tools, cybersecurity, AI, and other foundational technologies. Before founding Amplify, Sunil spent 14 years at Battery Ventures, where he invested through both the dot-com boom and bust before launching Amplify in 2012, which today manages more than $2.7 billion in assets. In this conversation, Sunil reflects on the entrepreneurial influence of his parents, lessons learned investing through multiple technology cycles, and the conviction that led him to build Amplify around technical founders long before the rest of the venture industry caught on. We also discuss why venture firms need a clear reason to exist, how long-term relationships become your greatest fundraising advantage, what separates durable investors from emerging managers, why founder "fit" matters more than pattern matching, how technological shifts create entirely new categories of entrepreneurs, and the importance of staying early to transformational markets even when the timing isn't immediately obvious. Learn more about Sunil on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilnagaraj/ Explore Amplify Partners at https://www.amplifypartners.com/. (05:52) Sunil's childhood and growing up in Rochester, New York (08:09) Did Sunil always think he would become a founder? (09:22) Transferring from Rochester to Georgetown (11:39) The story behind Sunil's transfer from Rochester to Georgetown (11:55) Discovering venture capital after college (15:10) Lessons from investing through the dot-com boom and bust (16:58) The insight behind founding Amplify Partners (20:27) The first investor who backed Amplify (23:13) Starting a venture fund then versus today (27:09) Bringing Mike Dauber on as a partner (29:43) How Amplify evaluates technical founders (32:47) The characteristics of exceptional founders (36:00) Why founder-market fit ma