An Evening with Claire Zau of Lightspeed & Mecka
You’ve seen the stories shaping the future of AI. Meet the investor helping tell them.
Join Pittsburgh Student Venture Capital and Scottie Ventures for Lightspeed Labs, an evening with Claire Zau, Partner & New Media at Lightspeed Ventures, alongside Tyler Nee and Kevin Hu from Mecka. We’re bringing together students from Pitt and CMU to explore venture capital, startups, and the future of physical AI.
You don’t need a finished company or a funding round to connect with investors. Whether you’re exploring your first idea, already building, or considering a startup career, come meet people who can help you take the next step.
Meet Claire
With 350,000+ followers across social media and millions of monthly views, Claire has built a platform that brings the biggest developments in AI, startups, and venture capital to life.
She brings an investor’s insight and a creator’s reach. At Lightspeed, Claire invests in pre-seed and seed companies, helps shape the firm’s new media strategy, and co-hosts Lightwork, its weekly AI podcast.
Before joining Lightspeed, she spent six years investing at GSV Ventures while building her media platform. Now, she’s bringing that experience directly to Pittsburgh to share her journey, answer your questions, and meet the next generation of student founders.
A leading name in venture capital
Lightspeed is a leading global venture capital firm with more than $50 billion in assets under management, backing founders from the earliest stages of company building through global growth. Through Lightspeed Labs, that perspective comes directly to campus, connecting investors and companies with students at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journeys.
Physical AI with Mecka
What does it take to build robots that learn from the real world? Meet two people working on that challenge at Mecka.
Mecka recently raised a $60 million Series B led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from NVIDIA, Microsoft’s venture fund M12, Qualcomm Ventures, and Samsung. The company builds data infrastructure for robot learning and real-world deployment and is hiring across engineering and operations.
Tyler Nee, Head of Strategy: Previously Chief of Staff at Sanctuary AI, a humanoid robotics company, and co-founder of two startups. Tyler will share his perspective on building a physical AI company and exploring careers in robotics.
Kevin Hu, Head of Computer Vision and ML: A member of Mecka’s founding engineering team who built its production computer vision pipelines from scratch. Kevin will discuss the technical work behind turning first-person video into robot training data. He studied mechatronics and robotics at McMaster and holds a master’s in Systems Design Engineering from Waterloo.
Whether you’re interested in computer vision, machine learning, robotics, or joining a startup, bring your questions for the people building the technology.
What to expect
5:30–6:00 PM · Doors open
6:00–6:30 PM · Fireside chat with Claire Zau: Moderated by Ethan Tran, covering Claire’s journey, Lightspeed’s investment approach, the venture capital industry, and what she looks for in early-stage founders.
6:30–6:45 PM · Audience Q&A with Claire: Ask about AI, building a company, breaking into venture capital, or connecting with investors.
6:45–7:15 PM · Fireside chat with Tyler Nee and Kevin Hu from Mecka: Moderated by Anish Jain of Scottie Ventures, exploring Mecka’s technology, physical AI, and career paths in robotics and startups.
7:15–7:30 PM · Audience Q&A with Mecka
Come with an idea, a career question, or simply a curiosity about what comes next. No startup experience needed.
October 29, 2026 · 6–7:30 PM ET
Doors open at 5:30 PM
Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, Carnegie Mellon University
4765 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Hosted by Pittsburgh Student Venture Capital × Scottie Ventures.