Meet RDV’s West Coast 2021 Fellows!
Each year at Rough Draft Ventures, General Catalyst’s student founder focused program, we meet hundreds of students who are shaping entrepreneurial communities across West Coast campuses — hackathon organizers, entrepreneurship club leaders, startup founders, and more. Of those students, we selected five to join our program as Venture Fellows.
RDV Venture Fellows are ambassadors for RDV and fellow entrepreneurs on campus, helping to identify and support student founders. They work closely with student groups and collaborate on events and programs to bolster the student entrepreneurship community. Every other week, Venture Fellows hear pitches from top student founders and make recommendations for backing the highest potential companies.
This year we’ve got computer scientists, founders, product managers, business operations strategists and more. Let’s meet the crew!
- Sara Reynolds (UC Berkeley) — Anchorage, Uber, ConsenSys, BCG Digital Ventures
- Anirudh Jain (Stanford) — Facebook, Scale AI, Intel, Zapproved
- Tyler Crown (Stanford GSB)— Sapphire Ventures, Anthemis Group, Assurant Growth, Deloitte
- James Kaplan (USC) — Troy Capital Partners, Trill Project, Harbor Ridge Capital
- Deevy Bhimani (UC Berkeley) — Roblox, Virtual Kitchen Co, Loom, Kittyhawk
Sara Reynolds
Sara is a junior at UC Berkeley studying Computer Science, with a minor in Spanish Language. She is heavily involved in the blockchain and crypto landscape in Berkeley and San Francisco, having joined Blockchain at Berkeley as a freshman, leading the Blockchain Fundamentals Decal for one semester. In 2017, she worked as a Software Engineering Intern at ConsenSys on the MetaMask team, and in 2018 joined Uber as a Security Engineer Intern, working on cloud infrastructure and security. As a passion project, she co-founded she256, a nonprofit dedicated to increasing diversity in the blockchain space and loves working to build the next generation of female founders, builders, and creators.
Email: Sara@roughdraft.vc
Anirudh Jain
Anirudh is a senior at Stanford University, majoring in computer science with specialization in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Systems. He is passionate about applying machine learning concepts innovatively to solve problems. He has worked at Intel’s Cloud Platform group to build algorithms for automation of datacenters using predictive failure detection, Facebook’s Search group to design and implement new ML algorithms for search, recent unicorn Scale to create 2D and 3D object tracking annotation software using computer vision, and most recently, Facebook AI Research this past summer to conduct research on non-autoregressive machine translation and sequence to sequence evaluation. At Stanford, Anirudh enjoys teaching and has been a TA for the introductory CS classes (CS198 program) since his freshman year. He has also designed and taught CS classes through his work with the CS+Social Good organization, conducted consulting through Stanford Students in Applied Research Consulting and been a portfolio manager on the Blyth Fund.
Email: Anirudh@roughdraft.vc
Tyler Crown
Tyler is currently a first year MBA student at the Stanford GSB. Tyler has investing experience with Anthemis Group and Assurant Growth Investing, investing in early and late stage startups across the fintech, proptech, auto, mobile, and e-commerce sectors. Tyler also supports entrepreneurs in his free time, serving as a lead mentor for various startups with Techstars and Boomtown Accelerator. Tyler began his career working for Deloitte’s M&A Strategy Consulting Group. Tyler received his BS in Finance at the University of Virginia as an Echols Scholar.
Email: Tyler@roughdraft.vc
James Kaplan
James is a junior at USC studying Business with a minor in Behavioral Economics. He is deeply passionate about mental health and heads up growth and business development for the Trill Project, a student-run social enterprise. This past summer, he worked for Troy Capital Partners, a multi-stage venture fund focused in LA, and is dedicated to bringing capital and entrepreneurial resources to transformative startup founders in Southern California!
Email: James@roughdraft.vc
Deevy Bhimani
Deevy is a senior at UC Berkeley studying data science with a domain emphasis in urban science. He is heavily involved in the entrepreneurship scene on campus as the Director of Cal Hacks Fellowship, an accelerator for the best hackathon teams, and also manages startup.berkeley.edu. He previously worked with Lightspeed Venture Partners as the UC Berkeley ambassador. In the past, he’s worked at companies ranging from 3–800 employees in roles across product management, growth, operations, customer success, business development, and data science. He spends his free time exploring new roads on motorcycles, playing tennis, and watching Formula 1.
Email: Deevy@roughdraft.vc
Thanks for getting to know us! If you have any questions, comments, or just want to say hi, feel free to reach out to us!
And if you’re working on a startup and want to chat, go to “Apply” on our website, www.roughdraft.vc!
