1:1 with execs from OpenAI, NVIDIA, NEA, Cisco, Atlassian | Unstuck your startup | Early stage founders

Sold out in 2025. Register before it sells out again.

3 things that make this different:

• It is built for the earliest stage. Every session targets a blocker pre-seed and seed founders are hitting right now, and sends you home with tactics you can use on Monday.

• Close interation with speakers, who stay in the room. After each main-stage session, the panelists sit down for an off-the-record roundtable with 12 to 15 founders.

• Every speaker has been in your seat. All of them have founded, funded, or advised a pre-seed or seed startup.

Agenda:

Knowing When To Build For Speed And When To Build For Scale

• Jeetu Patel (President & Chief Product Officer at Cisco)

• Shuo Chen (General Partner at IOVC; Lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford)

Building a Repeatable Growth Engine

• Yuriy Timen (Head of Growth at Superhuman)

• Vaibhav Aggarwal (Head of Growth Engineering at OpenAI)

• Nealesh Patel (Chief Revenue Officer at Crunchbase)

Landing a Customer Ten Thousand Times Your Size

• Anu Bharadwaj (Partner at ICONIQ; Board Member at Toast; former President at Atlassian)

• Ty Sbano (CISO, Webflow)

• Eric Tan (Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Goodwin; Ex-CIO & Chief Security Officer at Flock Safety)

• Mayank Mehta (Co-Founder & CEO at Gather; Ex-GVP at Gartner)

Finding Talent Where No One Else Is Looking

• Brandon Sammut (Head of People at Mind Robotics; former Chief People & AI Transformation Officer at Zapier)

• Erica Galos Alioto (Chief People Officer at Retool)

• Jerel Lim (CEO at DECODE)

Engineering AI Systems That Don't Break in Production

• Tashfeen Suleman (Director Engineering, Enterprise Data and AI Platform at NVIDIA; Ex-YC Founder)

• Megh Gautam | Head of Product (Apps) at Box; former Chief Product Officer at Crunchbase

• Parul Singh (Partner at 645 Ventures; Board Partner at Initialized Capital)

What Investors Need To Believe In Your Company

• Doug Donzelli (Founder & CEO at Synfini)

• Jake Flomenberg (Partner at Wing Ventures)

• Sam Angus (Partner, Fenwick & West)

What Breakout Companies Get Right Before Anyone Notices

• Lila Tretikov (Partner & Head of AI Strategy at NEA; former Deputy CTO at Microsoft; Board Member at UBS, Volvo, Xylem & Capgemini)

• Esther Wojcicki (Founding Advisor at Treehub by AI Health Fund; Godmother of Silicon Valley)

• Gaurav Vohra (Startup Advisor & Growth Leader at Superhuman, Wispr Flow, Clay, Replit; a16z scout)

• Sandy Diao (Former Director of Growth, Descript)

Why attend? (Apply to join the founders lunch/dinner with no additional cost)

💬 Bring your current blockers and work it with the panelists on the spot, in intimate roundtable discussions.

🍽️ Join an invite-only lunch/dinner with founders and speakers

💡 Ask the investors in the room what would make them pass on your round, before you start raising

Success Stories

Past attendees have ...

• Successfully raised pre-seed, seed and series A rounds from top tier investors they met through DECODE roundtables and dinners, including a16z, Sequoia and Y Combinator

• Found advisors and mentors to help 10x growth in their startups through DECODE speakers, including experts from Apple, Google and Microsoft

• Identified co-founders and early hires for their startups through DECODE community members, representing Databricks ($62bn valuation), Agora (IPO) and FlowGPT (Series A)

What are roundtables (Recommended if you are already building)?

Your Roundtable ticket guarantees one seat. 12-15 founders per table with the panelists, right after their session.

Your table is assigned from your application, so tell us the blocker you want worked on.

This kind of direct time with someone like an NEA partner or a former Atlassian president usually needs a warm intro or an existing relationship. It's included in this ticket.

We will reach out separately to confirm your session and gather your bio to share with panelists beforehand.

What is the lunch / dinner (Apply here)?

For founders attending our conference and working on/already have early traction, apply to attend a pre-conference lunch or post-conference private dinner with other founders, speakers and advisors.

Both are small rooms of founders, speakers, and advisors, seated together.

We will reach out separately to confirm your spot and gather your bio to share with other dinner attendees beforehand.

Agents Meet, powered by Walnut AI

Don't leave your networking to chance. This event is packed with founders, investors and builders, and Agents Meet helps you find the right people to meet before you walk in.

How it works

1. Register and opt in. Fill in your Linkedin profile, who you want to meet, and other information when signing up, and answer "Yes" to Agents Meet matching.

2. Agents find your matches. Walnut AI will create a digital twin account for you on Walnut AI platform, and AI agents match you only with other attendees who opted in to Agents Meet for this event.

3. Get your matches. Matches arrive by email the day before the event, each with a reason why you should meet.

4. Reach out and meet. Connect with your matches before the event day and have an IRL meet during the event.

Note: Matching registration closes 2 days before the event day at 11:59 PM. Only guests who answer "Yes" will be matched. If you answer "No", Walnut AI will not access your registration information. Opting in is optional, and you can still attend the event without it.

Important Note

We have a packed day and will be starting promptly at 12:30pm as some speakers have hard stops. A number of speakers are coming early and we highly encourage everyone to arrive earlier to meet them!

Please have something to eat before our conference. Due to food waste generation policies at the David Brower Center, we are unfortunately unable to provide food for all attendees while keeping ticket prices reasonable.

Also note that there should be no food and drinks consumption in the main theatre. Food and drinks can be consumed at the gallery area or in the roundtable rooms.

About DECODE

As a 501(c)3 non-profit, our mission is to help founders in the earliest stages of building a startup.

Since 2008, we have become the largest founder community co-hosted across Berkeley and Stanford.

Get FREE Tactical Tips by DECODE here

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Reach out to jerel.lim@decode.build if cost is a barrier. We provide scholarships to those who are serious about their entrepreneurship journey.