1:1 with execs from OpenAI, NVIDIA, NEA, Cisco, Atlassian | Unstuck your startup | Early stage founders

Sold out in 2025. Register before it sells out again.

3 things that make this different:

• It is built for the earliest stage. Every session targets a blocker pre-seed and seed founders are hitting right now, and sends you home with tactics you can use on Monday.
• Close interation with speakers, who stay in the room. After each main-stage session, the panelists sit down for an off-the-record roundtable with 12 to 15 founders.
• Every speaker has been in your seat. All of them have founded, funded, or advised a pre-seed or seed startup.

Is the ticket price stopping you? Apply to be a DECODE Scholar

DECODE Scholars, in partnership with Delphi, covers the ticket for founders who should be in this room but cannot pay for it.

Each Scholar gets

• A free conference ticket
• A seat at one roundtable with the panelists, right after their session

Apply for yourself, or nominate a founder you think should be here. It takes about 5 minutes.
👉 Apply or nominate here

Agenda:

*12:30 - 13:00 | Welcome Address*

*13:00 - 13:30 | Knowing When To Build For Speed And When To Build For Scale*

• Jeetu Patel (President & Chief Product Officer at Cisco)
• Moderated by: Shuo Chen (General Partner at IOVC; Lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford)

*13:30 - 14:00 | Building a Repeatable Growth Engine*

• Vaibhav Aggarwal (Head of Growth Engineering at OpenAI)
• Guy Marion (Chief Marketing & Growth Officer at Chargebee)
• Yuriy Timen (Head of Growth at Superhuman)
• Moderated by: Jaclyn Ling (Co-founder & CEO at Bento; Venture Partner at Pioneer Fund; YC founder)

*14:00 - 14:30 | Landing a Customer Ten Thousand Times Your Size*

• Mayank Mehta (Co-Founder & CEO at Gather; Ex-GVP at Gartner Peer Insights)
• Ty Sbano (CISO at Webflow; Ex-CISO at Vercel)
• Eric Tan (Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Goodwin; Ex-CIO & Chief Security Officer at Flock Safety)
• Moderated by: Jerel Lim (CEO at DECODE)

*14:30 - 15:00 | Finding Talent Where No One Else Is Looking*

• Erica Galos Alioto (Chief People Officer at Retool)
• Brandon Sammut (Head of People at Mind Robotics; Ex-Chief People & AI Transformation Officer at Zapier)
• Moderated by: Brad Bowery (Global Head of VC & PE Partnerships at Deel)

*15:00 - 15:30 | Engineering AI Systems That Don't Break in Production*

• Jay Dang (Co-Founder & CEO at Kaon)
• Parul Singh (Investment Partner at 645 Ventures; Board Partner at Initialized Capital)
• Tashfeen Suleman (Director of Engineering, Enterprise Data & AI Platform at NVIDIA; Ex-YC Founder)
• Moderated by: Moody Abdul (Founder & CEO at Klarify (YC P26))

*15:30 - 16:00 | What Breakout Companies Get Right Before Anyone Notices*

• Gaurav Vohra (Startup Advisor & Growth Leader at Superhuman, Notion, Wispr Flow, Clay, Replit; a16z scout)
• Esther Wojcicki (Founding Advisor at Treehub by AI Health Fund; Godmother of Silicon Valley)
• Moderated by: Gené Teare (Journalist & Research Lead at Crunchbase)

*16:00 - 16:40 | What Investors Need To Believe In Your Company*

• Doug Donzelli (Founder & CEO at Synfini)
• Jake Flomenberg (Partner at Wing Ventures)
• Moderated by: Sam Angus (Partner, Fenwick & West)

*16:40 - 17:10 | Fundraising Fails Unpacked: What Founders Wish They Knew Earlier*

• Lila Tretikov (Partner & Head of AI Strategy at NEA; former Deputy CTO at Microsoft; Board Member at UBS, Volvo, Xylem & Capgemini)
• Moderated by: Shuo Chen (General Partner at IOVC; Lecturer at UC Berkeley and Stanford)

*17:10 - 17:30 | Closing Address*

*17:30 - 19:00 | Open Networking*

Success Stories

Past attendees have ...

• Successfully raised pre-seed, seed and series A rounds from top tier investors they met through DECODE roundtables and dinners, including a16z, Sequoia and Y Combinator
• Found advisors and mentors to help 10x growth in their startups through DECODE speakers, including experts from Apple, Google and Microsoft
• Identified co-founders and early hires for their startups through DECODE community members, representing Databricks ($62bn valuation), Agora (IPO) and FlowGPT (Series A)

What are roundtables (Recommended if you are already building)?

Your Roundtable ticket guarantees one seat. 12-15 founders per table with the panelists, right after their session.

Your table is assigned from your application, so tell us the blocker you want worked on.

This kind of direct time with someone like an NEA partner or a former Atlassian president usually needs a warm intro or an existing relationship. It's included in this ticket.

We will reach out separately to confirm your session and gather your bio to share with panelists beforehand.

What is the lunch / dinner (Apply here)?

For founders attending our conference and working on/already have early traction, apply to attend a pre-conference lunch or post-conference private dinner with other founders, speakers and advisors.

Both are small rooms of founders, speakers, and advisors, seated together.

We will reach out separately to confirm your spot and gather your bio to share with other dinner attendees beforehand.

Get Relevant Matches, powered by Walnut AI

Don't leave your networking to chance. This event is packed with founders, investors and builders, and we help you find the right people to meet before you walk in.

How it works

1. Register and opt in. Fill in your Linkedin profile, who you want to meet, and other information when signing up, and answer "Yes" to attendee matching.
2. We find your matches. We will create a digital twin account for you and match you only with other attendees who opted in for this event.
3. Get your matches. Matches arrive by email the day before the event, each with a reason why you should meet.
4. Reach out and meet. Connect with your matches before the event day and have an IRL meet during the event.

Note: Matching registration closes 2 days before the event day at 11:59 PM. Only guests who answer "Yes" will be matched. If you answer "No", we will not use your registration information for matching. Opting in is optional, and you can still attend the event without it.

Important Note

We have a packed day and will be starting promptly at 12:30pm as some speakers have hard stops. A number of speakers are coming early and we highly encourage everyone to arrive earlier to meet them!

Please have something to eat before our conference. Due to food waste generation policies at the David Brower Center, we are unfortunately unable to provide food for all attendees while keeping ticket prices reasonable.

Also note that there should be no food and drinks consumption in the main theatre. Food and drinks can be consumed at the gallery area or in the roundtable rooms.

About DECODE

As a 501(c)3 non-profit, our mission is to help founders in the earliest stages of building a startup.

Since 2008, we have become the largest founder community co-hosted across Berkeley and Stanford.

Get FREE Tactical Tips by DECODE here

Follow & Subscribe:

• Website
• LinkedIn
• YouTube

Reach out to jerel.lim@decode.build if cost is a barrier. We provide scholarships to those who are serious about their entrepreneurship journey.

About Delphi

Delphi is a network where you can find and learn from the people who have been through what you're facing. Describe your situation, and Delphi surfaces perspectives from founders, investors, operators, and experts who have lived it, then lets you go deeper with an interactive version of their mind, grounded in their own writing, talks, and interviews. Every Delphi is one real person, who owns what goes into it. At DECODE, speakers will have their own Delphi: scan the QR code on stage to keep the conversation going long after the panel ends. Delphi is backed by Sequoia Capital.

About HarnessRouter

HarnessRouter assembles production-ready AI agents in real time and cuts AI agent costs by over 90%. Think of it as OpenRouter, but for agent harnesses. Its unified interface turns every part of an agent system, from harnesses, models and providers to skills, tools, plugins, memory and sandboxes, into LEGO-like interchangeable building blocks. For each task, HarnessRouter snaps together the best harness, model and modules, optimized for quality, latency or cost, and runs them in an isolated sandbox. Built on the open Unified Harness Protocol (UHP), it’s enabling a future where you simply speak, and agents come to life.

Contact: KuanzeMa@HarnessRouter.ai

DECODE Conference Extension

The Big Hack Game, the flagship AI hackathon between Stanford and Berkeley, runs Nov 15–20. It lets builders from both schools solve real problems brought by enterprises, working alongside industry experts.

Register here: https://luma.com/t2598jt6?utm_source=decode