By Ryan Hoover and Vedika Jain on Jan 16, 2025
.png)
In October, we announced open applications to become a Weekend Partner.
Our goal was to partner with builders—operators, founders, and people shaping the future—to source and invest in promising startups. Why? Builders often have a prescient view of what's next. They identify problems early, adopt new technologies quickly, and earn respect from fellow builders.
We received over 500 applications—far more than expected. Narrowing this down from a submission form proved difficult, so we ran a tournament to let applicants show, rather than tell, their abilities as investors.
Over four weeks, we received 530 referrals, resulting in 82 introductions to founders. In December we interviewed 17 of the top-performing candidates and invited 10 to join us.
This initial cohort spans multiple geos—from San Francisco to London—and a range of expertise—from AI to fintech. Each Weekend Partner brings a unique vantage point on where the future is headed. They will serve as an extension of the fund, sourcing deals from their networks and evaluating opportunities within their areas of expertise on a part-time basis (hence the title, Weekend Partners). We’ll be collaborating with them to make investments.
We’re excited to introduce our inaugural cohort of Weekend Partners.
Ayushi Sinha
New York
@ayushisinhahaha, LinkedIn
Ayushi is the founder and CEO of Turmerik. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and graduated Cum Laude from Princeton University with a degree in Computer Science and a certificate in Cognitive Science. She’s worked as an investor at Bain Capital Ventures, a product manager and engineer at Microsoft, and a member of the Product team at Nines, where she contributed to building FDA-approved AI and ML medical devices.
She is actively involved in the Princeton CS and Harvard Business School communities and can often be found on the tennis court. She is interested in AI and healthcare, expert data labeling, and designing South Asian-inspired fashion.
Conor Brennan-Burke
San Francisco
@conorbb33, LinkedIn
Conor is the Founder and CEO of Hyperspell, infrastructure that makes unstructured data useful for AI applications. Previously, he built a bootstrapped AI music company and worked in product at Pave, Checkr, and BCG. He lives in San Francisco at the Mission Control hacker house, birthplace of multiple unicorn startups.
He supports other founders with GTM/fundraising and loves trying AI tools. Many of his investments come from firsthand experience as a customer of AI products, focusing on the application layer and SaaS. In his spare time he's passionate about sci-fi, DJing, and fitness.
Jason Liu
Toronto, Waterloo, San Francisco, and New York
@jxnlco, LinkedIn
Jason Liu is an independent consultant, previously a machine learning engineer at Stitchfix, and now an angel investor/advisor. Jason studied mathematical physics at Waterloo before diving into the world of ML back in 2012.
Coming back from an RSI, spends his time working on advising companies on their AI strategy and training business on how to improve RAG Applications. He’s the creator of Instructor, a Python library that makes working with structured outputs from LLMs easier. It’s picked up over 8,000 GitHub stars, 1 million monthly downloads.
Outside of work, Jason writes about ML systems and personal growth, and is active on Twitter, and spends the rest of his time practicing pottery, BJJ, and free diving.
Kanan Rengaraju
Los Angeles
@KananRengaraju, LinkedIn
Kanan has built his career around joining early stage companies and launching startups. He was the first employee at Sydecar, where he focused on growth and operations. Before joining that he worked in data and operations at Lunchclub.
Currently, Kanan is angel investing and consulting while developing ideas for his next startup. He’s immersed in the LA and SF tech and AI ecosystems—spanning gaming, deep tech, consumer, and DTC. Kanan is bullish about Los Angeles as a rising tech hub. Outside of work, he enjoys diving into philosophical and scientific discourse and rereading The Three-Body Problem series for the millionth time.
Nakul Patel
Honolulu
@nakulsan, LinkedIn
Nakul has a deep background in sales, partnerships, and business development at companies like Facebook, Google, and startups like Parse and mmhmm. He is now focused on early-stage sales advisory and investing, both as an angel and through Diagram Collective, an angel group he runs.
He's focused on investing in B2B companies with ambitious technical teams that need GTM support. He has recently been spending more time with founders across Asia Pacific.
Rishabh Kaul
London
@rishabhkaul, LinkedIn
Rishabh enjoys investing in anything interesting, but is often seen hanging around enterprise, developer tools and (increasingly) fintech founders. He has spent his career either founding or being an early employee at tech startups, including as the founder of the enterprise HR tech startup Belong, raising a Series B from Sequoia and Matrix. He was also an early employee at scale-ups like GreyOrange and Appsmith. Rishabh advises and invests in early stage startups via his syndicate Goodfellas, as well as a scout for Village Global.
He enjoys backing underdog founders and helping with marketing, GTM, and fundraising. He’s plugged into the UK and Indian tech ecosystems, and started a community for South Asian operators and founders in Europe called Svagat.
Sean Cai
San Diego
@SeanZCai, LinkedIn
Sean previously served as Head of Investments for General Catalyst's Fellow program, focusing on AI infrastructure. He’s plugged into networks like the .406 Fellow Network, Emergent Ventures, 1517, as well as the broader ecosystem of young university graduates and dropouts.
Previously, Sean co-founded a startup building with 360-degree live videoconferencing and is now working on state-of-the-art Optical Music Recognition (OMR) for multimodal use cases. He remains deeply interested in enterprise software, particularly LLM infrastructure, and has written angel checks for companies like Womp Labs and deepsilicon.
Outside of work, Sean enjoys fencing and delving into obscure historical topics. A lifelong geography enthusiast, he prides himself on being a top-tier map trivia player. Currently, he is building software to make all day-to-day interactions and connections available as simple API access, with plans to open-source the project in the future.
Sheena Hillier
San Francisco
LinkedIn
Sheena is an experienced product leader at the forefront of generative AI, machine learning, and enterprise software. She has dedicated her career to transforming groundbreaking research into scalable, impactful solutions. She has pioneered advancements in foundational models, retrieval-augmented generation, and applied machine learning.
She is currently an AI investor and advisor to leading funds and Fortune 500 companies, combining technical expertise with a strategic vision for emerging technologies. She has successfully scaled products from concept to launch across global markets and brings a wealth of experience—and fun stories—from working on three continents.
Sheena is passionate about emerging technology, helping animals in need, and all the fascinating weather concepts that we have yet to fully understand. She splits her time between Aspen, San Francisco, and London.
Shivam Bhatia
San Francisco
@shivambhatia42, LinkedIn
Shivam is an operator and investor with a focus on the intersection of AI, healthcare, and fintech. He previously worked at AI companies like Camb.ai and built a consumer fintech startup that scaled to over 100K MAUs before being acquired by BharatPe in India.
Shivam is plugged into the Founders Inc., SPC, EF communities, and regularly hosts events. He’s currently focused on AI and agents to streamline processes, especially in fintech and healthcare.
Taro Fukuyama
Los Angeles
@taro_f, LinkedIn
Taro, originally from Japan and now based in Los Angeles, is the founder of Fond (YC W12), an HR enterprise SaaS acquired by Edenred in 2023. He invests in both US and Japanese startups, with a particular focus on YC-backed companies. Taro has invested in over 100 startups and sits on the boards of a unicorn in Japan, SmartHR. He’s focused on investing in B2B SaaS and marketplace startups.
Outside of work, Taro owns an invite-only sushi restaurant in Santa Monica.
