What VCs Won't Tell You — In conversation with Aditya Naganath (Kleiner Perkins)
Join us for an intimate fireside chat and dinner with Aditya Naganath, Partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capital firms.
Founded over 50 years ago, Kleiner Perkins has backed some of the most iconic technology companies in history, including Google, Amazon, Harvey, Anthropic, Spotify, Stripe, Cognition, Doordash, and Figma.
Before joining KP, Aditya held engineering and product roles at Palantir, Google, Twitter, and Nextdoor. Today, he focuses on investing in AI, enterprise software, and infrastructure.
Event begins at 5:00pm. Aditya will be speaking at 5:30pm. Dinner will be served at 6:15pm.
We’ll go beyond the typical VC conversation to explore:
Inside the investment process: What actually happens between the first founder meeting and an investment decision? What makes an investor develop conviction, and what kills a deal?
Identifying exceptional founders: How does Aditya recognize extraordinary talent before the rest of the world does? What separates a compelling pitch from a truly exceptional founder?
The future of AI: Where does Aditya see the biggest opportunities for startups, and which categories are at risk of being absorbed by foundation models?
The uncomfortable truths about venture capital: What do investors discuss behind closed doors that founders rarely hear?
About Aditya Naganath:
Aditya Naganath is a Partner at Kleiner Perkins, where he invests in AI, enterprise software, infrastructure, and security, with investments including Sail, Traversal, WisdomAI, and Maxima. Before Kleiner, he was a product manager at Google, a technical lead at Palantir, and a software engineer at Twitter, where he earned a patent, and at Nextdoor, where he was a Kleiner Perkins Fellow. Originally from Mumbai, he holds a BS in Computer Science from Columbia and an MBA from Stanford. Outside of work, he hosts poker games, plays guitar in a hard rock band, competes in chess and squash, and fosters puppies with his wife.
About Outcast Ventures:
Outcast Ventures is an early-stage venture firm co-founded by Andy Chen and Amy Lin, alums of Coatue, Kleiner Perkins, NFX, and YC. Outcast is built on the belief that founding teams matter more than founding ideas.
Outcast invest $500K–$1M at pre-seed and seed. Some teams are already formed. Others form through Catalyst.
Sponsors:
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a division of First Citizens Bank, is the bank of some of the world’s most innovative companies and investors. SVB provides commercial banking to companies in the technology, life science and healthcare, private equity and venture capital industries. SVB operates in centers of innovation throughout the United States, serving the unique needs of its dynamic clients with deep sector expertise, insights and connections. SVB’s parent company, First Citizens BancShares, Inc. (NASDAQ: FCNCA ), is a top 20 U.S. financial institution with more than $200 billion in assets. First Citizens Bank, Member FDIC.
Fenwick is a leading law firm, purpose-built to guide visionary tech and life sciences companies and their investors through every stage of growth, from startups securing their first round of funding to leading publicly traded global enterprises. As one of Silicon Valley’s original legal practices, today we have over 600 lawyers, patent agents, engineers, and scientists serving clients all over the world. Named 2024 Practice Group of the Year for both Life Sciences and Technology by Law360, we are consistently ranked a Chambers first-tier firm for delivering the deep experience and technical skill that help innovators at the forefront of their industries shatter boundaries and redefine what’s possible.