Winners Welcome Podcast, Episode 12 with Nihal Mehta, Co-Founder of Eniac Ventures.

Nihal Mehta has been betting on New York for almost two decades. Now he’s betting on AI to do some of his own job for him.

When Nihal Mehta co-founded ENIAC Ventures in 2009, the firm’s first fund was $1.5 million, raised while he and his partners were still running their own startups on nights and weekends. Sixteen years later, ENIAC is investing out of a $220 million fund, and Nihal says the feeling hasn’t changed much: it still feels like first innings. AI has reset the game board, and once again, he says, it’s anybody’s game.

What has changed is how he runs the firm day to day. Nihal walks through how ENIAC has wired Claude into nearly every system they use, Affinity, Gmail, Google Calendar, Airtable, so inbound deals get summarized and routed to Slack the moment they land. He goes further, describing how he had Claude read through an entire deal’s Slack history, email threads, and call transcripts to answer the open questions raised in the firm’s investment committee, then render a verdict on whether to move forward. It’s a candid look at how a venture partner is actually using AI agents to source, screen, and diligence, not as a talking point, but as daily infrastructure.

From there, the conversation turns to New York itself. Nihal makes the case for why the city’s density of ambition gives it something San Francisco can’t replicate, and why he believes the AI application layer, both consumer and enterprise, will be won here. He points to companies like Traversal and Obo as early proof points, and argues that New York’s concentration of Fortune 500 headquarters makes it a natural home for AI selling into regulated industries.

The episode closes on the relationships behind the deals. Nihal talks about building what he calls a “human rolodex” over two decades of consistent, no-strings-attached giving, and how that philosophy shows up in Pitch and Run, the global founder running community he co-founded, and Human Unicorns, his ongoing series on the people behind category-defining companies.

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About The Winners Welcome Podcast

The Winners Welcome Podcast brings elite founders and top investors into thoughtful conversations on pushing past possible, sharing the conviction, standards, and lessons behind building generational companies.

About Harlem Capital

Harlem Capital is a venture capital firm that backs the next generation of winners. The firm partners with exceptional founders with the irrational motivation to build generational companies. All Winners Welcome.

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