Sheila Gulati, Managing Director
I am perpetually overcommitted, and this problem only appears to be getting worse. I have interests across a wide range of topics, and I like to say yes, especially when one of our portfolio company leaders is asking for something.
My expanding list of commitments means that I’m constantly making to-do lists – on paper, on my phone, in my head (sometimes in the middle of the night) – and this has led me on a quest for a tech solution that will keep someone with a million commitments (like me!) organized.
What I don’t want is another thing on my to-do list to manage. What I do want is a solution that runs in the background and helps me, without additional burden – that reduces the work of doing work.
Three years ago, I was telling a fabulous angel investor in Berlin about this quest, and she said I should check out Tana and meet the founders, which I did. I was on my way to Norway anyway for some fjord-geous travel. And what was supposed to be a “quick breakfast” with Tarjei, Olav, and Grim before a hike with my best friend, turned into a five-hour jam session, geeking out over productivity. (Thanks Gloria, for the amazing introduction!) The way Tana approaches the problem of organization was totally unique, and the mission to enhance productivity, while improving users’ lives, was unmatched.
And what made the meeting even sweeter is that the founders were totally obsessed with one another and deeply complementary in terms of skills. Tarjei Vassbotn is an engineer who is a natural CEO, an ex-Googler with deep product and AI experience; Olav Kriken is one of the leading growth figures coming out of the Nordics who drips passion for his product; and Grim Iversen is a visionary with deep information modeling expertise, having worked on productivity systems for the past 25 years.
Together, they’re bringing to life a vision: Eradicate the work about work.
Fast forward to 2025: we use Tana as our “OS to run Tola” and there is no more time in our internal meetings about how we’re going to track who needs to do what, how we’ll get information to those not in the meeting, or what the corpus of work is on a given company or project. Team members can seamlessly partner together and are able to orchestrate a large quantum of work with ease. Tana takes care of the “how” in the background, while we have more ease and clarity around what really matters. Our minds are free from operational minutiae that builds up across our distributed team across multiple time zones.
How does the tech work? Tana is a knowledge graph with connections and org charts that mimic how the human brain maps relationships, contextual identities and behaviors.
Tana resurfaces, processes, and connects information so you automatically get information where you need it. And their unique Supertag feature builds on concepts from Object-oriented programming, transforming unstructured to structured information.
Simply put, think of each group or project you’re working on as a unique graph of people and work. Tana operationalizes your life so your to-do lists feel magical.
I’m in awe of the shift from databases and traditional machine learning to knowledge graphs and AI. The next generation of Tana allows you to customize agentic team members! The product is fun to use and allows experts to customize their own external knowledge into their system. (What fund manager doesn’t want to have the David Swenson agent in their meetings?!)
So, I’d like to take a moment to say thank you to the whole Tana team, for allowing us to lead the Series A, and for building something that aligns productivity with effortlessness. Tarjei, Olav, Grim, and all of team Tana: We are committed to you in so many ways and are very excited to have you in our Tola portfolio!