Interview with Sakunthala Panditharatne

This week at F equals, we were joined by Sakunthala Panditharatne (Saku), computer graphics programmer, Virtual Reality (VR) enthusiast, ex VC analyst at Andreessen Horowitz, former intern at Oculus, and recent creator of a neural network MOOC (Massive Open Online Course).

Saku won a Google competition at 16, turned down a Peter Thiel fellowship and interned at Oculus whilst studying Maths and Computer Science at Cambridge. She went on to work at Silicon Valley’s famous venture capitalists Andreessen Horowitz before returning to the UK. Here’s her story:

Newnham: What were you like growing up? How would your friends and family have described you?
Pandirharatne: I am happy to answer this question by saying I was actually a lot cooler and more badass than you might think. I ran an “underground newspaper” that interviewed local creatives and used to go to punk rock gigs. But I was also known as the math kid, I got sent off to stuff like math camp.

I also enjoyed debating, I was part of debate club and would always argue in defense of stuff like video games and pirated music. My real love though, was the internet and web culture. Being an immigrant to the UK, people would often ask me where I was from, and I would say “the internet.”