Building in the Age of AI

​A panel for CMU alumni building in AI.

​What we'll dig into:
• What AI actually changed about starting a company in 2026, and what hasn't changed
• Build in-house vs buy from a lab vs buy from a startup, and who keeps the value
• What "AI-native" looks like inside a company day to day, not as a pitch line
• What each of them would be scared to start right now
• Lab, startup, or fund: how they'd pick today

​Panelists

• ​Justin Zhu —co-founder of Iterable ($2B), now building Mithra

• ​Rachel Wong — CTO & Partner at Basis Set Ventures, built the firm's internal AI deal-evaluation system

• ​Sid Malladi — Founder & CEO of Nuvo, AI-native order-to-cash for B2B trade (Sequoia, Founders Fund)

• ​Rohan Varma — Product Lead on Codex at OpenAI, first PM at Cursor, founded Clarity (acquired by Cursor)

• ​Aatish Nayak (moderator) — Partner at Kleiner Perkins, previously Shield AI, Scale AI, Harvey

​Schedule

• ​5:00–5:30pm — Doors open

• ​5:30–6:00pm — Registration + dinner

• ​6:00–6:30pm — Panel discussion

• ​6:30–6:45pm — Small-group breakout discussions

• ​6:45–7:30pm — Open networking

​Approval only. Thank you to our sponsors Aatish & Justin.

​Hosted by CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship & Mithra.