Murtaza Bandukwala
General Partner @ New Era Ventures. SF-based. Product + ops background → VC.
Snapshot
- Email:
murtaza@neweraventures.com - LinkedIn:
/in/murtazab - Personal site: murtazabandukwala.com — actively maintained
- Location: San Francisco
Background
- Education: Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT).
- Product / Ops background (per his personal site self-description).
- Path to VC: student investment scout for various funds/family offices → met Carter Steffes in “Gen Z VCs” Slack group → built syndicate together → fund (New Era Ventures, Fargo ND HQ; Murtaza in SF).
🎯 Personal “Deep Dives” (from his own site — high-signal thesis interests)
- AI Infrastructure ← DIRECT init.inc thesis match (the picks-and-shovels / agent-infra / MCP-auth / multi-tenant agent-access layer)
- Nuances in the U.S. healthcare pricing system
- “As medications continue to advance, how will clinical research keep up with demand”
- Commerce 10 years from now
Investing (per his personal site)
- DeepMedia AI — pre-seed; generative AI for media localization at scale (deepmedia.ai). His one publicly listed investment.
Personal interests (rapport surface)
Basketball, startups, investing, reading, philosophy, snowboarding, swimming, Arabic, ice cream.
Fundraise Relationship (init.inc)
- Context: Murtaza’s published “AI Infrastructure” deep-dive interest maps to init.inc’s thesis (see above). Operator-investor (product + ops background). New Era Ventures is small + early; check size unknown.
- 2026-05-28 1pm — first meeting (45 min, Zoom). Murtaza sent the invite Wed 5/27.
- Intro source: cold or unknown ^[needs-research] — no prior email thread.