Announcing the 2024 Cohort of the NFX Fellows program.

We reviewed 300+ applicants to our 2024 cohort, ultimately selecting 17 students from Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, and MIT.

Over the last year, generative AI has changed the game, and this cohort of Fellows was selected to capitalize on today’s inflection point in tech. They’ve been founders, investors, operators, and builders. They come from four continents and 19 industries. They all have one thing in common, and it’s their unparalleled ability to move with flexibility and speed – the two critical ingredients for success in the AI era. They also have a unique point of view about where this and other transformative technologies are headed.

The NFX Fellows program is designed to sharpen the advantages we’ve recognized in student founders for years. Fellows are our thought partners on campus. We provide them access to our playbooks for investing and building companies so they can become ideation partners and early backers of their classmates.

More on our on-campus funding programs launching March/ April 2024, through which NFX will invest $100-250K in 10-12 student-founded startups:

• Stanford FAST – For all Stanford students and alumni
• Harvard FAST – For all Harvard students and alumni
• MIT FAST – For all MIT students and alumni
• Berkeley FAST – For all Berkeley students and alumni

If you’re a student founder or an alumni of these schools, reach out to our fellows directly with your ideas.

*NFX partners are alumni from these schools and we’re working on rolling out the program to more campuses soon.

Stanford

Alice Liu

Alice is a first year MBA student at Stanford GSB. Prior to GSB, Alice was based in San Francisco, and led Instagram’s revenue strategy team, where she helped launch ads on Instagram Explore and Reels. More recently, Alice worked in Venture operations at a16z, where she leveraged analytics to improve the firm’s operational support for portfolio companies. She graduated with a B.S. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Email: liualice@nfx.com

Brandon Nydick

Brandon is a senior at Stanford majoring in Political Science. He previously worked at Bessemer Venture Partners and Draper Associates as well as the activist hedge fund Corvex Management. He is a former competitive chess player and was ranked in the top ten in the USA for his age for over a decade, achieving a peak USCF ELO of 2351. In addition to chess, Brandon loves surfing, skiing, tennis, and weightlifting.

Email: bnydick@nfx.com

Flávia Beatriz Cruz

Flavia is a second year MBA student at Stanford’s GSB. Forever interested in how tech enables magically better services to people, she found in fintech a wonderful space to put that in practice: worked five years with all types of financial products for businesses at J.P. Morgan, and later led teams in credit card and insurance at Nubank – the largest neobank in the world. Super interested in what is still to be built not only in fintech, but also healthcare, marketplaces, SaaS and AI, Flávia worked for monashees VC during the summer. Flávia is Brazilian and graduated from FGV University. Outside office hours, you can find Flávia painting, cycling, dancing, and (trying to) DJ.

Email: flaviabc@nfx.com

Jon Pedersen

Jon is a second year MBA student at Stanford’s GSB. Always a car, bike, and engineering-at-large nut, he pivoted from his mechanical engineering degree to work in optimization at Waymo. Through the next four years, he wrote software for trip optimization, simulation, and city exploration before joining the ML team full time to build the driving model. Before the GSB, he joined Planted Solar as its first experienced software engineer, where he built their stack from zero code. Over the summer, he worked at Playground Global—a deep-tech VC where he focused on deep-learning software and hardware. He’s interested in AI workflows, data companies, medical tech, and energy grid solutions. In the future, he’d like to teach.

Email: jonpeder@nfx.com

Mark Khalil

Mark is a first year MS student in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford. Prior to Stanford, Mark worked as a summer intern on the climate team at Union Square Ventures in NYC. Before joining USV, Mark worked at a small impact investing fund focused on food, agritech, and climate investing in emerging markets, and as a development economist in Sudan. Mark is also an angel investor in a number of startups. He graduated from Yale with a MA in Development Economics, and from The University of Toronto with a BSc in Financial Economics. He is from Cairo, Egypt.

Email: mrkhalil@nfx.com

Harvard

Antia Vazquez

Antía is a first year MBA student at HBS. Prior to HBS, she was in São Paulo working as Chief of Staff at Zubale, an ecosystem of e-commerce solutions that empower retailers in Latin America in growing their businesses. Prior to that, she was a consultant for McKinsey in Mexico City. Antía graduated from the Huntsman program in International Studies and Business at the University of Pennsylvania in 2019.

Email: avazquez@nfx.com

Itamar Belson

Itamar is a first year MS/MBA student at HBS and the Harvard Graduate School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He previously led engineering teams at Twitter focused on experimental features and was Head of Engineering at a Series A consumer social startup. Prior to that, he worked at Pixar Animation Studios, contributing to films such as Coco, Incredibles 2, and Onward. Itamar graduated from MIT where he studied Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and double majored in Media and Film Studies. He then completed his Masters in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT’s Media Lab where he focused on the intersection of Computer Graphics and AI.

Email: ibelson@nfx.com

Janet Chen

Janet is a first year MBA student at HBS. She was previously at Insight Partners on the strategy & innovation team, and at Sprinklr, a customer experience management SaaS startup (now public). Janet graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in Economics-Political Science.

Email: jachen@nfx.com

Raphael Maarek

Raphael is a first year MBA student at HBS. He was previously working at the Viola Group, one of Israel’s largest investment funds, as a Principal in the Credit team. Prior to that, he was a consultant for Bain & Company, mostly in the Private Equity practice. Raphael graduated from ESSEC’s Grande Ecole program in Paris with a MIM and magna cum laude from NC State University with a B.S.c in Business Administration.

Email: rmaarek@nfx.com

Shub Chhokra

Shub Chhokra is a second year MBA student at HBS, whose investment interests include commerce tech, B2B marketplaces and enterprise software. Prior to this, he was Chief of Staff at commerce-tech startup Ghost (now Series B). Before that, he was a venture and growth investor at Manhattan West, based out of Los Angeles. Prior to this he was an associate at a hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. Shub graduated from Harvard College cum laude with a degree in Social Studies and Computer Science.

Email: schhokra@nfx.com

Vitor Miele

Vitor Miele is a first year MBA student at HBS. Prior to HBS, he was a venture and growth investor at SoftBank Latin America Fund, based out of São Paulo. Before joining SoftBank in 2019, he was an Investment Banking Analyst at Rothschild & Co. Vitor is also an angel investor in software and marketplace startups in Brazil and the USA. He graduated from Insper in São Paulo with a degree in Economics.

Email: vmiele@nfx.com

Yasmin Sachee

Yasmin is a second-year MBA student at HBS. She is passionate about the intersection of vertical software and AI, spurred by her experience as Chief of Staff at Writer – an AI writing platform for enterprises. Prior to Writer, she was a consultant in McKinsey’s software and media practice in New York. Yasmin graduated from Harvard College in 2018.

Email: ysachee@nfx.com

MIT

Emily Yu

Emily is a second year MBA student at MIT Sloan. Roboticist by training, Emily previously worked at Amazon Robotics leading Amazon’s warehouse automation expansion to the EU and APEC. Emily has also been a startup operator (both as founder and joiner) focusing on food & bev in B2B and B2C. During MBA, Emily interned at AlleyCorp Robotics evaluating early-stage robotics / AI startups across ag, climate, and logistics. Emily is passionate about using technology/AI to transform traditional industries.

Email: emilyyu@nfx.com

Marta Dern

Marta Dern is a second year MBA student at MIT Sloan. Marta spent her MBA internship at Forgepoint, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Software in the Bay Area. Prior to Sloan, Marta worked for six years in Cybersecurity, focused on Identity and Access Management in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries. Marta grew up in Barcelona, Spain and earned her Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering and her Master’s degree in User Experience from Universitat Ramon Llull.

Email: mdern@nfx.com

Samuel Bosch

Samuel is an MIT PhD candidate in AI and the Co-Founder & CEO of the Cambridge-based legal tech startup Marveri. In a previous life, Samuel founded Assist-o, a sales and marketing startup with 25+ employees in four countries. He received his master’s degree from EPFL and Harvard University. Samuel also completed his minor in business administration at Harvard Business School. In his free time, he is also a hobby YouTuber.

Email: sbosch@nfx.com

Berkeley

Vardaan Tekriwal

Vardaan is a student at UC Berkeley, triple majoring in Math & Statistics, IEOR, and Business. He has worked in Web3, FinTech, and AI, achieving recognition from the likes of Ethereum and Ripple for his side projects. His entrepreneurial experience includes founding now-acquired Docmod AI, co-founding and operating as the CFO for the AI Entrepreneurs at Berkeley incubator (managing $2.2 million in cohort-investment), and founding Authentica.xyz. Besides, he is an avid adrenaline junkie and sports enthusiast; scuba diving, long-distance running, badminton, and soccer are all up his alley.

Email: vtekriwal@nfx.com

Xan Wood

Xan is a second-year MBA student at Berkeley Haas. Prior to joining Haas, he worked in Private Equity at Development Finance Asia and Private Credit at TransAsia Private Capital, where he spent the last 7 years investing across Asia. During his first year at Haas, he raised $1 million in capital from approximately 100 MBAs and alumni to invest in Berkeley-founded businesses. Xan completed his undergraduate degree in History at the University of Edinburgh, where he built an events business that organized events for up to 5,000 attendees, featuring artists such as Kygo.

Email: xan.wood@nfx.com