Sajith (Saji) Wickramasekara is the co-founder and CEO of Benchling, the R&D cloud platform used by more than 200,000 scientists across pharma, biotech, and academia. He took leave from MIT in 2012 to rebuild the software scientists use at the bench, and has stayed in the CEO seat as the company grew to a roughly $6 billion valuation.
Cory Li is the CEO and co-founder of Spellbrush, the San Francisco-based generative AI studio behind niji-journey - the world's leading AI anime art platform built in collaboration with Midjourney. A MIT-trained bioengineer turned AI entrepreneur, Li previously co-founded Benchling (YC S12), the biotech R&D platform that went on to become a unicorn. At Spellbrush (YC W18), he leads a 31-person team building AI-powered anime games and creative tools - from WaifuLabs' anime portrait generator to Arrowmancer, an anime RPG where players design characters using generative AI, to niji-journey's mobile app with millions of users.
Eric Vishria is a General Partner at Benchmark Capital, one of Silicon Valley's most selective venture firms, where he has led investments in companies like Confluent, Cerebras Systems, Benchling, and Amplitude. Before venture, he co-founded RockMelt (acquired by Yahoo in 2013) and spent years at Loudcloud/Opsware through its $1.65B HP acquisition - an experience he describes as a graduate education in startup warfare. Known for his 'slope over starting point' framework for evaluating founders and his early warnings about AI capital implosion, Vishria brings rare operator depth to a firm built on equal-economics, no-hierarchy partnerships.