The New Frontier of Tech Investment
March 10-12, 2026
Stanford GSB & Berkeley · Silicon Valley
The Venture Capital & Founder Playbook for the AI Era
VC-BootCamp is a three-day immersive experience bringing together venture capital partners, limited partners, and Stanford LEAD startup founders to confront one question:
How does venture capital actually work in the age of AI—and how must it change?
- How AI is transforming VC deal flow
- VC Speed-Dating: Pitch to over 50 VCs
- Access Exclusive Dealflow
- Connect with LPs
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 top VCs from Silicon Valley, Europe, and the Middle East. Forge partnerships that unlock cross-border opportunities and de-risk emerging-market investments.
Access Exclusive Dealflow
Through partnerships with Stanford LISA and SkyDeck, gain access to curated startups ready to scale globally.
Connect with LPs
Meet institutional investors, family offices, and fund-of-funds exploring innovative theses and new regions.
✦ 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.
Schedule
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
at Stanford
12:45 pm - 1:30 pm
LUNCH
Arbuckle Dining Pavilion (GsB)
1:30 pm - 2:45 pm
NETWORKING
Meet with the VCs and Executives.
Arbuckle Dining Pavilion (GsB)
3:00 - 3:50 pm
VC-University: A Different Perspective
Adam Sterling
Associate Dean at Stanford Law School
3:55 - 4:05 pm
COMMUNITY OPEN MIC
You have 30sec to pitch ANYTHING to the VCs and audIence – Just raise your hand!
4:10 - 4:40 pm
Perspectives from Different Ecosystems
Cindy Zhong
Country Customer Engineering Leader, Canada Startups @ Google Cloud
Roger Luo
AI Builder Turned Investor, Embedding VC
4:40 - 5:00 pm
Perspectives From the Next Generation of VCs
Yuri Curumthaully
African Entrepreneurship Thought Leader
Paul Yung
Venture capital analyst at Monte Carlo Capital
Nadia Knouz
Public/Private Investment Africa
Anuj Totapudi
Managing Partner, N2 Ventures
5:00 - 5:05 pm
COMMUNITY OPEN MIC
You have 30sec to pitch ANYTHING to the VCs and audIence – Just raise your hand!
7:00 - 9:00 pm
Exclusive dinner with venture capitalists, limited partners, and industry leaders
Macarthur Park
27 University Avenue, Palo Alto
AI Adoption: A Linkedin Perspective
Sharat Raghavan
Director of Data Science & Research at LinkedIn; PhD and lecturer at Berkeley
How Can You Influence Your Innovation Ecosystem
Mahendra Ramsinghani
Managing Director, Secure Octane Investment
8:00 - 8:05 pm
COMMUNITY OPEN MIC
You have 30sec to pitch ANYTHING to the VCs and audIence – Just raise your hand!
9:00 pm
NETWORKING with the VCs and Executives
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 |
| 3:00 PM | Open | Open | Open | Open |
| 4:00 PM | Open | Open | Open | Open |
Thursday, March 12, 2026
in Berkeley
9:00am- 12:00pm
VISITS: SKYDECK (UC BERKELEY ACCELERATOR)
Gregory LaBlanc
Professor at UC Berkeley
George Panagiotakopoulos
Head of Europe & Global Expansion
Global Innovation & Entrepreneurship Ecosystem Development
12:00pm - 2:00pm
Lunch at Standford GsB
Keynote 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