Venky Harinarayan

Venky Harinarayan is a Partner at the early-stage venture capital firm Rocketship.vc, based in Silicon Valley. He previously co-founded Junglee Corp., which Amazon acquired for approximately $250 million in 1998, and Kosmix, which was purchased by Walmart in 2011. Following these acquisitions, Harinarayan served as a key executive at both acquiring companies, helping develop Amazon Marketplace and the Mechanical Turk concept before becoming Senior Vice President of Global e-Commerce at Walmart to create @WalmartLabs. As an investor through Cambrian Ventures and his current firm, he backed prominent technology companies including Facebook in 2005 and Lyft, contributing to a portfolio of founded and funded startups valued at over $1 billion. Holding a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University and a bachelor's degree from IIT Madras, his career centers on advancing large-scale distributed systems, search technologies, and early-stage e-commerce investments.