VC Roundtable: A Private Conversation with Venky Harinarayan
About Event
📅 Tuesday, May 12
⏰ 2:45 PM – 5:30 PM PT
📍 Venture Dock — Palo Alto, CA
The main session is open to non-members.
Afterward, Venture Dock members will join a private, closed-door session with Venky.
About the Event
We’re hosting our next VC Roundtable with Venkatesh “Venky” Harinarayan — entrepreneur, investor, and Founding Partner at Rocketship.vc.
Venky has spent decades building and backing category-defining technology companies. From helping shape Amazon Marketplace and Mechanical Turk, to founding companies acquired by Walmart and Amazon, to investing early in companies like Facebook, Lyft, and Moveworks, Venky brings one of the most unique founder-investor perspectives in Silicon Valley.
This session is designed to be small, highly interactive, and founder-focused, giving attendees direct access to an operator and investor who has helped build billion-dollar companies from the earliest stages.
If you’re building an ambitious company, thinking about scale, or navigating fundraising and product-market fit, this is a room worth being in.
What to Expect
We’ll start with an open conversation with Venky Harinarayan:
• Building and scaling category-defining companies
• What investors look for in exceptional founders
• Lessons from Amazon, Walmart, and Silicon Valley’s biggest technology shifts
• How founders should think about AI, marketplaces, and global opportunities
• What separates companies that break out from those that don’t
This will be a highly interactive session, with plenty of room for questions and discussion throughout.
Next, we’ll move into a private, members-only roundtable with Venky.
A smaller group, deeper conversation, and more direct access for Venture Dock members.
We’ll close with open networking, giving founders and attendees the opportunity to connect more personally with Venky and the community.
👋 Meet Venky
Venkatesh “Venky” Harinarayan is an entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and Founding Partner at Rocketship.vc, a data-driven venture capital firm managing over $250M in assets.
Originally from Chennai, Venky earned his undergraduate degree from IIT Madras, an M.S. from UCLA, and a PhD from Stanford University.
Venky co-founded Junglee, a pioneering shopping search engine acquired by Amazon; Kosmix, acquired by Walmart; and was a founding investor in Efficient Frontier, later acquired by Adobe.
He also played key entrepreneurial roles at Amazon and Walmart. At Amazon, he helped create the Marketplace business, which today represents more than half of all units sold on Amazon, and originated the concept behind Mechanical Turk. At Walmart, he founded and led @WalmartLabs as Senior Vice President of Global eCommerce.
As an investor, Venky was one of the earliest angel investors in Facebook and has also invested in companies including Lyft, Moveworks, and AppNexus.
He is also Principal Owner of the San Francisco Unicorns, a Major League Cricket franchise, and continues to actively support founders building transformative, world-changing businesses.
Agenda
2:45 – 3:00 PM
Arrival & Early Networking
3:00 – 3:40 PM
Opening Conversation with Venky
Insights on entrepreneurship, scaling technology companies, venture capital, and building lasting businesses
3:40 – 4:10 PM
Founder Q&A + Open Discussion
Direct questions, real feedback
4:10 – 5:00 PM (Limited Access)
Private Session with Venky (Conference Room)
Closed-door roundtable with Venture Dock members
Deeper discussion + direct founder feedback
5:00 – 5:30 PM
Networking
👉 Not a member yet?
Apply to join: https://venturedock.fillout.com/t/gHcUcf7Tz8us
If you’re building something ambitious, this is a room worth being in.