Prakash Janakiraman

Part-Time Partner

2023 - Current

The House Fund is a pre-seed and early stage venture capital fund focused on the boldest Berkeley startups. We started in 2016, with investments in 100+ startups, including 15+ exits. Over 100 firms have follow-on invested $5B+ in our startups. The House Fund has become a thriving ecosystem for the boldest Berkeley startups to grow.

Advisor

2021

Parade Ventures is a seed stage venture fund investing in enterprise-themed companies. Our model champions businesses with recurring revenue, big margins, high lifetime value, and repeatable sales models. We’re building companies with strong economics and capital efficiency.

Leadership Council, USF Institute for Nonviolence & Social Justice

2020

Founded by Dr. Clarence B. Jones, the USF Institute for Nonviolence and Social Justice investigates, illuminates, and advances the theory and practice of transformational nonviolence to confront and overcome injustice and systemic violence and contribute to the just resolution of communal conflict. The institute focuses on the most urgent social problems in our communities, across the nation, and around the world. It aims to bring attention to the systemic, pervasive violence that plagues our society and world, to understand this violence as a public health crisis, and to work to address it. The goal is to be useful to students, activists, and thinkers confronting injustice and inhumanity in all forms. https://myusf.usfca.edu/centers/institute-for-nonviolence-and-social-justice

Advisor

2018

Helping conduct technical due diligence on prospective investments and teams, recruiting and interviewing for technical executives, and reviewing technical architecture and strategy with portfolio founders.

Investor & Advisor

2015

Investing in and advising early stage startups with purpose-driven founders. * Lemon Perfect (https://lemonperfect.com/) * FlexPower Health (https://www.flexpower.com/) * Career Karma (https://careerkarma.com/) * Blue Wire (https://www.bluewirepods.com/) * GeoJam (https://www.geojam.xyz/) * Pamos (https://www.pamos.com/) * TravelJoy (https://traveljoy.com/) * Lime (https://www.li.me/) * Impossible Foods (https://impossiblefoods.com/) * Canvs (https://canvs.ai/) * Shots (https://shots.com/) * Hamlet (https://www.myhamlet.com/) * Marginal MediaWorks (https://marginal.media/) * My Mama's Foods (https://www.mymamasfoods.com/) * Stepathlon (https://www.stepathlon.com/) * Bay FC NWSL Club (https://bayfc.com/) * Next Play U (https://www.nextplayu.io/) * Honeycomb Labs (https://www.honeycomb-labs.com/) * Cohere Commerce (https://www.thecohere.com/) * Kolkata Chai Company (https://kolkatachai.co/) * AnySpace (TBD)

Co-Founder Emeritus

2022 - 2023

Co-Founder, Chief Architect, Head of DEIB

2014 - 2022

Nextdoor's purpose is to cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on. Our mission is to be the neighborhood hub for trusted connections and the exchange of helpful information, goods, and services. Nextdoor is being used by nearly every neighborhood across the United States and more than five thousand public agencies. We have also launched in the UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, and Canada. We’re growing every day to make each community a stronger, safer place to call home.

Co-Founder and Vice President, Engineering

2010 - 2014

Co-Founder and Vice President, Engineering

2008 - 2011

Fanbase aims to be the web's largest almanac of rich information on pro and college athletes. The site includes career info, photos, videos, articles, and discussions on over 1,750,000 people in sports, with all content contributed by fans.

Uber Tech Lead

2005 - 2007

Managed the Google Maps engineering team. Responsible for teams working on community based enhancements to the service including My Maps, KML search, and user-editable maps as well as core front-end and geocoding infrastructure services. Worked with distributed teams in India, Zurich, New York, Seattle, Japan, and Australia. Prior to maps, managed engineering team through launch of Google Base, a searchable repository of user-published structured data. At launch, the repository contained nearly half a billion documents, mostly commercial (for-sale) items.

Engineering Manager

2002 - 2005

Managed web development team responsible for all end-user facing functionality on both Epinions.com and Shopping.com. Led team through complete rewrite of frontend architecture, migrating from a Perl-based legacy system to a fully internationalized Java-based system with greatly improved performance. Led engineering recruiting efforts, growing team in CA from 6 FTE to > 20 FTE. Led technical integration of Epinions.com and Dealtime.com after merger, migrating Epinions.com to the Dealtime backend platform for product information and implementing the eventual rebranding and redesign of Dealtime.com to Shopping.com.

Application Architect

2000 - 2001

Acquired by Postini, November 2002. Postini acquired by Google, 2007.