Ryan Batra is the VP, Talent Partner at Khosla Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's most influential deep-tech venture firms. A career talent architect with over a decade in hypergrowth tech, he spent six years building DoorDash's technical and executive recruiting machine through multiple phases of explosive expansion, then led recruiting at Lime and OpenStore before landing at Khosla. Now he helps founders across KV's portfolio - spanning AI, biotech, space, and climate - hire the engineers, researchers, and leaders who make bold ideas real. He's placed 500+ engineers and leaders. His philosophy: talent is one of the most powerful forms of leverage a founder has.
Samson Wu is a Recruiting Operations Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), one of Silicon Valley's most influential venture capital firms. With roots in economics from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and formative stints at AIESEC, Uber, and CloudKitchens, he has become a key architect of how a16z and its portfolio companies find and hire world-class talent. He supports the firm's New Media team as an HR Business Partner and brings operational rigor to recruiting functions that span early-stage startups to growth-stage companies across the a16z portfolio.