Aditya Naganath

Principal

Aditya Naganath joined Kleiner Perkins’ investment team in 2022 with a focus on artificial intelligence, enterprise software applications, infrastructure and security. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Aditya was a product manager at Google focusing on growth initiatives for the next billion users team. He previously was a technical lead at Palantir Technologies and formerly held software engineering roles at Twitter and Nextdoor, where he was a Kleiner Perkins fellow. Aditya earned a patent during his time at Twitter for a technical analytics product he co-created.

Originally from Mumbai India, Aditya graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, and an MBA from Stanford University. Outside of work, you can find him playing guitar with a hard rock band, competing in chess or on the squash courts, and fostering puppies. He is also an avid poker player.

Investment focus areas

— Artificial Intelligence

— Security

— Infrastructure

— Consumer Software

Companies Backed

AI for the Enterprise

Since 2019

Operational Data Warehouse

Since 2020

All-in-one JavaScript runtime & toolkit

Since 2022

Q&A

How has your background as a software engineer and product manager influenced how you approach investing?
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.
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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.
What are you on the lookout for?
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.
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When I meet such teams, I am all in.
Where does your passion for technology come from?
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.
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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.
What led to you joining a hard rock band?
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.