​An evening of strategy, community, and timeless games

​Ridge Ventures and Orion Innovation are excited to invite you to the third edition of our chess series — a community gathering built for engineering and product leaders from the Bay Area tech scene.

​This isn’t just about chess. It’s about slowing down, thinking strategically, and building meaningful connections with fellow leaders and innovators. No slides, no pitches — just sharp minds across the board.

​What’s new this time?

​♟️ More time for the game. The full evening is dedicated to chess and conversation.

​🧠 More Masters & Formats for every level. Whether you want to challenge a Master, join a free play session, or just watch the moves unfold, there's something for every skill level.

​🤝 More space for real conversations. We’re keeping the group small and curated — a mix of engineering leaders, product execs, and VCs — to encourage high-quality networking.

​Why Chess?

​Chess is more than a game — it's a way of thinking. It sharpens focus, tests creativity, and mirrors the strategic decisions we face in tech and leadership every day.

​Whether you're a beginner, a lifelong player, or just curious, you're welcome here. Come ready to play, observe, and connect.

​Our guests:

​​Rishabh Gokhale is a National Master in chess and a second-year college student majoring in Data Science. His journey with chess began in childhood. After qualifying for the World Under-7 Championship, Rishabh went on to win several international tournaments and numerous state titles across India. He is the only student in his school’s history to receive the General Achievement Award two years in a row. Looking ahead, Rishabh aspires to achieve the Grandmaster title, pursue a PhD in Mathematics, and build a career in data analysis or pure mathematics.

​Chandrashekhar Gokhale is an International Master. He is a chess player and coach, with an outstanding competitive record and deep contributions to Indian chess. He is the winner of multiple national titles — including the U-14, U-16, and U-18 National Championships — and was the runner-up at the Commonwealth Championship. Served as a Coach for Team India at prestigious tournaments (the Asian Individual Championship, the World Youth Championship (twice), the World Blind Chess Championship). In recognition of his coaching excellence, he has been awarded the FIDE Trainer title by the World Chess Federation.

​Shivkumar Shivaji is a FIDE Master in chess and also a serial entrepreneur, software architect, and researcher. With over a decade of experience in technology and innovation, he has been fortunate to work on transformative projects that combine cutting-edge AI research with practical applications. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of California and has also studied Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. As a co-founder and CTO of several successful startups, he is passionate about building impactful solutions that shape the future. Beyond his professional endeavors, he is an avid learner and a polyglot fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Tamil, Hindi, and French. Currently, he is exploring Arabic, Japanese, and Chinese as part of his love for languages and discovering firsthand how LLMs work.

​Dmitry Zilberstein is an experienced chess International Master with achievements ranging from winning many scholastic tournaments to winning a brilliancy prize in the 2004 US Chess Championship to playing mostly online more recently and composing chess endgame studies.  He still participates in the over-the-board tournaments occasionally. Dmitry works in Wells Fargo as a software engineer, and has experience ranging from QA, DevOps, and Development. His most recent professional certifications are Azure Fundamentals and Google Python IT Automation. He's most passionate about software automation.

​Organizers:

​Ridge Ventures is a San Francisco-based early-stage venture capital firm founded in 2007. Ridge Ventures specializes in Seed and Series A funding, focusing on experienced founders transforming software interaction in technology, enterprise, and consumer markets. 

​Orion Innovation is a leading digital transformation and product development services firm. We help companies and startups across various sectors with solving SW technology challenges by scaling the engineering capacity and co-innovating to design high-quality solutions across many industries including industrial IoT, telecom and media, professional services, financial services, healthcare and life sciences, sports and entertainment, and education.