The AI Revolution in Venture Capital
March 10-12, 2026
Stanford GSB & Berkeley · Silicon Valley
The Venture Capital & Founder Playbook for the AI Era
presents:
VC Bootcamp - 2026 Edition
JOIN US for a three-day immersive experience that will transform how you approach venture capital in the age of AI.
Why AI? Why Now?
- INNOVATION CYCLES ARE TOO FAST: A startup can go from idea to $100M valuation in 18 months. Traditional quarterly review cycles miss opportunities.
- MARKETS ARE TOO COMPLEX: 50,000+ startups raising capital globally each year across hundreds of emerging sectors. No human team can track them all.
- DATA IS TOO VAST: Patents, publications, GitHub repositories, talent movements, social signals—millions of data points daily that reveal opportunity. Without AI, you’re flying blind.
Main Sponsors & Partners:
✦ 8th Edition
What is VC-BootCamp?
VC-BootCamp is not a conference. It is a working laboratory for investors and founders operating at the frontier of AI, capital, and scale.
Hosted at Stanford Graduate School of Business and UC Berkeley, VC-BootCamp convenes a highly curated group of VCs, operators, and founders to examine—without hype—how AI is reshaping:
• Venture capital decision-making • Startup evaluation and scaling • Investor–founder dynamics • Risk, failure, and long-term performance This is where the theory ends and practice begins.
keynote speakers
who have addressed the opportunities emerging from building bridges between global innovation ecosystems
RECEPTIONS
where corporate executives, leaders, and investors can exchange on strategy, investments and talent attraction
PITCH Competition
for Start-Ups and Scale-Ups
VISITS
to SKYDECK (Plug & Play Incubator), Stanford University, and UC Berkeley
Build Global VC Connections
Collaborate with leading venture capital firms across Silicon Valley, Europe, Africa, and beyond. Forge partnerships that unlock cross-border opportunities and strengthen global investment strategies.
Access Exclusive Dealflow
Through partnerships with Stanford LISA and SkyDeck, gain access to curated startups developing scalable, AI-driven solutions with global ambition.
Connect with LPs
Engage with institutional investors, family offices, and fund-of-funds exploring next-generation venture models, AI-native investment theses, and new approaches to performance and risk.
✦ VC-Bootcamp 2026
Two Audiences. Two Critical Questions. One Event.
VC-BootCamp is intentionally designed around two complementary tracks.
For Venture Capital Firms (USA, Canada, Middle East)
Evolving an Existing VC Firm into an AI-Native Organization
AI does not magically improve venture performance.
In many funds, it amplifies bad incentives, herd behavior, and blind spots.
This track is for existing VC firms asking hard questions:
- How should AI be embedded into deal sourcing, diligence, and portfolio support—without breaking the firm?
- What new roles, skills, and governance structures are actually required?
- Where do AI-driven investment strategies fail in practice?
- How do LP expectations change in an AI-accelerated world?
This is not about tools alone.
It is about operating models, culture, decision rights, and systemic failure modes.
For Stanford LEAD Startup Founders
The New VC Playbook: What Investors Actually Look for in AI Founders
Most founders pitch the technology.
VCs invest in signals.
This track gives Stanford LEAD founders direct, unfiltered access to how investors evaluate AI companies today:
What VCs really assess in AI teams, data strategies, and defensibility
Why many “great demos” fail investment committees
How AI changes expectations around speed, scale, and unit economics
What differentiates fundable AI founders from the rest
Founders don’t just hear the playbook.
They see it applied in real time.
Tentative Schedule
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
at Stanford
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
LUNCH & Networking
2:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Keynote Speaker
Coming Soon
3:00 - 3:40 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION
Topic: From Gut Feel to Infrastructure: How AI Is Rewriting Venture Decision-Making
3:40 - 4:20 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION
Topic: Due Diligence at Machine Speed: What Breaks, What Scales, What Changes Forever
4:20 - 5:00 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION
Topic: LPs, Governance, and Trust: Investing in Funds Powered by Algorithms
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Exclusive dinner with venture capitalists, limited partners, and industry leaders
Wednesday, March 11, 2025
at Stanford
One-on-one with VCs
| VC 1 | VC 2 | VC 3 | VC 4 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9:00 AM | Jesse Wills | Open | Open | Open |
| 10:00 AM | Jane Carter | Open | Open | Open |
| 11:00 AM | Open | Open | Open | Open |
| 12:00 PM | Open | Open | Open | Open |
| 1:00 PM | Open | Open | Open | Open |
| 2:00 PM | Open | Open | Open | Open |
Thursday, March 12, 2026
in Berkeley
10:00am- 12:00pm
UC BERKELEY (Hass School of Business)
Gregory LaBlanc
Professor at UC Berkeley
12:00pm - 2:00pm
Lunch at Standford GsB
2:00pm- 3:30pm
VISITS: SKYDECK (UC BERKELEY ACCELERATOR)
LISA (STANFORD ACCELERATOR), PLUG & PLAY SILICON VALLEY
Sample Speakers
Gregory LaBlanc
International speaker, Investor; Distinguished Teaching Fellow, Berkeley Haas; Academic fellow at Berkeley’s School of Engineering
Hoss - Hosni Zaouali
Co-Founder of Me2We at Stanford University; CEO of ConnectED-Labs, AI Avatars for Education
Sharat Raghavan
Director Data Science & Research @ LinkedIn | PhD & Berkeley Lecturer
George Panagiotakopoulos
Berkeley SkyDeck, Head of Europe & Global Expansion - Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development
Mahendra Ramsinghani
Managing Director, Secure Octane Investments
Roger Luo
AI Builder turned Investor, Embedding VC
Adam Sterling
Associate Dean, Stanford Law School
Cindy Zhong
Country Customer Engineering Leader, Canada Startups, Google Cloud
What You Will Experience
Across three days, participants engage in:
Minority-Led Startups in the AI Era
Why talent is evenly distributed—and capital is not
In the age of AI, venture capital faces a paradox: access to intelligence is expanding, yet access to capital remains highly concentrated.
Minority-led—especially Black-led—startups continue to be structurally underfunded, not because of a lack of talent or ambition, but because historical data, network effects, and pattern-matching—now increasingly embedded in AI-driven investment processes—tend to reinforce existing biases.
This track examines how AI can unintentionally amplify these blind spots, why this represents a missed opportunity for investors, and what both investors and founders must do differently to change outcomes.
This is not about lowering standards. It is about seeing signals that are currently overlooked.
✦ Why VC-BootCamp Matters Now
AI is not another sector. It is a general-purpose force that reshapes how capital allocates, how companies scale, and how advantage compounds.
Some VC firms will adapt—and outperform. Others will look sophisticated and underperform quietly.
Some founders will understand what investors are really optimizing for. Others will keep pitching the wrong story to the wrong signals.
VC-BootCamp exists for those who refuse to operate blind.
👤 Who Should Attend
Venture Capital & LPs from USA, Canada, India, Middle East and Asia
- General Partners, Principals, Operating Partner
- AI-focused and generalist funds navigating AI disruption
- LPs seeking insight into how funds are adapting in practice
Stanford LEAD Startup Founders
- AI and AI-enabled startup founders
- Operators preparing for fundraising or scale
- Founders seeking direct access to real VC decision logic
Sponsorship Opportunities
Main Sponsors & Partners:
Join VC-BootCamp 2026
VC-BootCamp is intentionally limited in size to preserve depth, trust, and quality of interaction.
If you are building, funding, or scaling companies in the AI era, this is where the real conversation happens.
Registration
StanfordLEAD participants
General Registration
$290 USD
Includes event, dinner, pitch competition, meet the LPs, and executives
(Not for StanfordLEAD participants, please use the StanfordLEAD registration)