From Thesis to $1.1B AUM - Fireside Chat with Sriram Viswanathan + Mixer
What does it actually take to build a venture firm from the ground up?
Join Sriram Viswanathan, Founding Managing Partner at Celesta Capital, for a conversation about building an investment platform that can raise capital, earn LP trust, develop an investment edge, scale across funds, and still make high-conviction decisions as the organization grows.
Celesta Capital was founded in 2013 and today reports $1.1B in assets under management and 100+ investments, with a focus on deep tech across AI, semiconductors, infrastructure, engineering-powered biology and other frontier technologies. celesta.vc
We’ll go behind the mechanics of venture capital and explore questions such as:
How do you raise the first fund?
What makes LPs come back for the next one?
How do you build a differentiated investment thesis?
How do investment committees preserve conviction without becoming overly institutionalized?
What makes a partner fight for a deal internally?
And what do founders often misunderstand about what is happening on the other side of the table?
For founders, this is a chance to understand how investors think, how funds make decisions, and how to become the kind of company a partner wants to champion.
For investors and emerging fund managers, it is a conversation about building not just a fund, but an enduring venture institution.
Following the fireside, stay for a Founder & Investor Mixer with the Tech Founders SF 2026 cohort, bringing together 20 Saudi founders, VCs, angel investors, operators and members of the Bay Area startup ecosystem.
The final hour is for direct conversations, new relationships, potential investment opportunities, and the questions that do not fit into a formal session.
Friday, October 2 | Menlo Park
5:00–7:00 PM Fireside Chat + Q&A
7:00–8:00 PM Founder & Investor Mixer
Hosted by SparkLabs as part of Tech Founders SF 2026, in partnership with CODE, MCIT and UC Berkeley.