Aditya Naganath

My time as a software engineer during a period of hyper innovation at Palantir has given me not only a solid technical foundation on which to engage with technical products and founders, but also an intense appreciation for the power of word class developer tooling and software infrastructure. Product management allowed me to flex a different set of muscles – end user empathy, design and asking good questions. I strive to combine the best of both of these experiences as an investor. They help me have productive conversations with founders, and build strong intuition around opportunities.

It’s always a privilege to meet teams with crystal clear clarity of thought. Without missing a beat, they can zoom in and out with ease and clearly articulate the “why”. I think the generational teams are able to combine this immense clarity of thought, which I believe is the ultimate sales tool, with relentless execution. When I meet such teams, I am all in.

It started when I used Google for the first time as a middle school student, in India, to complete a science project. I still remember that feeling of magic. I was exposed to the founding story soon thereafter and have since been inspired by the extent to which a few individuals can materially push society forward with a piece of technology. This propelled me to study computer science in college. I loved my technical courses and my inspiration was only further fueled by my experiences in the valley – at Twitter and as a KP Fellow. To me, technology is the clearest manifestation of human ingenuity. It allows our species to grow and explore. The other beautiful thing is – innovation can come from anywhere or anyone, regardless of background or pedigree. It is these aspects that keep my passion alive and well.

I’ve been playing the guitar for 12 years now. I got into it when I watched a video of Slash shredding a solo, and decided that I wanted to be like him. I mostly play hard rock and metal and was most recently lead guitarist of a band at business school.