Shreya Shekhar

Startup Immersion

Growing up in Silicon Valley, I was always chasing challenges – driven by a desire to prove I could tackle hard problems and turn ideas into real-world impact. That mindset led me to Berkeley’s M.E.T. (Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology) program, where I earned degrees in EECS and Business Administration in 3.5 years and took my first shot at building a startup. Though it didn’t succeed, this experience sparked a lasting appreciation for founder-market fit, co-founder dynamics, and what it really takes to build something enduring. This also motivated me to take the entire last year of college to immerse myself in startups.

During this year, I worked on hard technical problems across databases, systems, AI, and security at Rockset, Glean, and Abnormal AI. The desire to see something truly 0 → 1 is what led me to become a founding engineer at Bedrock Security. Here, I wore multiple hats working across engineering, product and strategy, to fill any gaps we had to succeed. More recently, I’ve been a partner to early-stage founders through my work as an angel, investing in Mercor and Composite.

Now there’s a new set of challenges to chase with the pace of transformation in today’s age of AI. With a whole new set of questions to answer, I was inspired to write and share my learnings here.

Building what lasts

Being at Glean, Abnormal AI and Bedrock Security during pivotal parts of the companies’ journeys taught me what it takes to build something that lasts. At Bedrock, the founders taught me the importance of having the self awareness to patch gaps early on by either becoming an expert yourself, or finding the right person for the job. Abnormal & Glean’s founders inspired me with their ability to opportunistically adapt their product based on technological advancements, and evolving needs of the market.

These are key principles I aim to carry forward when finding and supporting enduring businesses.

Truly partnering with founders

Having worked at three of Greylock’s portfolio companies, I’ve grown to have deep respect for the team and for the firm. But being at Bedrock Security, a Greylock incubation, is what showed me how Greylock is a true partner to founders. Whether it’s product strategy, sales, recruiting, or raw human support, our partners worked tirelessly to set us up for success. Greylock has invented a genuinely different breed of company building, and I aspire to be the best hand to exceptional founders building companies that last.