The VC Journey:
from Venture Capital → to Vibe Coding

I'm Karan and I'm a Go-To-Market enthusiast. While Bangalore will forever be my home, I'm currently shuttling between Austin and San Francisco.

After my undergrad in engineering, I started my career in Business Development across two startups. I moved into VC in 2021 as a founding team member at Antler's India fund and spent four years enabling early-stage founders. I'm currently getting my MBA at McCombs (UT Austin) and this is a small, slow corner of the internet for the projects and ideas I'm poking at lately.

Currently building & tinkering — scroll on
01  /  05

About me

I spent seven years on the tech side of things — first selling SaaS, then writing checks at one of Asia's most active early-stage funds.

Most recently I was an Investment Manager at Antler, where I joined as the first Associate hired in India and ended up running diligence on AI, SaaS, and developer tools deals across the region. Before that I was on the SaaS side at DigitalOcean and FusionCharts — the customer-facing seat that taught me what actually breaks at 2am.

Now I'm at McCombs doing my MBA, interning at S3 Ventures here in Austin, and — outside of work — running a non-profit soccer org of 20K+ members back home and leading a city chapter for The Product Folks. This site is half-portfolio, half-scrapbook: a few small projects, a few favorite things, and the slow public record of someone learning to ship.

Karan Prasad
02  /  05

A short career story

2026 — now

MBA Associate Intern — S3 Ventures

Back on the investing side, this time in Austin. Building internal agents and workflows that take roughly a quarter of the grind out of sourcing and diligence — and writing memos on Seed-to-Series-B SaaS and healthcare deals in the rest of the time.

2025 — 2027

MBA Candidate — McCombs, UT Austin

VP of the Tech Club, VP Venture Fellow, and runner-up at the OpenAI × UT hackathon — which is the project that finally made vibe coding click for me. Mostly here to learn from people who are weirder and more curious than I am.

2021 — 2025

Investment Manager — Antler, Bangalore

Four years at one of the most active early-stage funds in Asia. I joined as the first Associate hired in India and ended up leading diligence on AI, SaaS, cybersecurity, and developer tools deals — twelve investments, hundreds of pitches, and a stretch in the Bay Area helping Asian founders find their footing in the US.

2020 — 2021

Business Development — DigitalOcean

Selling cloud infrastructure to ed-tech and gaming founders across Asia. Spent the year on calls about databases, scaling, and the very specific terror of a launch-day spike. First time seeing the developer ecosystem from the inside.

2018 — 2020

Account Manager — FusionCharts

My first job out of engineering school. Looked after a hundred-odd US enterprise clients, supported the CEO through an acquisition, and learned the customer side of SaaS by sitting in on a lot of late-night onboarding calls. The training ground.

03  /  05

Side projects

/01

Longhorn Connect

A little MVP for UT Austin students to discover alumni, find alumni-posted jobs, send a polite cold email, and quietly thank the people who help.

longhorn-connect.vercel.app
/02

Tech Daily

A daily tech & VC briefing. The thing I wished existed when I was sourcing — short, scannable, and not trying to sell you a course at the bottom.

techdaily.club
/03

MBA Tech Club

The home for the McCombs MBA Tech Club — helping students break into PM, GTM, and operations roles in tech. Curriculum, speakers, company visits, alumni.

mbatechclub.netlify.app
/04

Dollarboard

A personal finance dashboard that tracks spending across email, bank statements, and receipts — with AI parsing and categorizing transactions across multiple currencies.

dollarboard.netlify.app
/05

The Founder Folks

A curated, founder-led network connecting ambitious entrepreneurs with investors, mentors, and resources — built for the Texas and Silicon Valley ecosystems.

thefounderfolks.com
04  /  05

Some content recommendations

🎙️ Podcast

TBPN

📺 TV Show

WeCrashed

📺 TV Show

Super Pumped

📺 TV Show

Succession

📬 Newsletter

#SoYouWantToWorkInPlatform

📬 Newsletter

This Week at YC

📬 Newsletter

The Product Folks

05  /  05

Say hello

I'm always up for a coffee chat about VC, vibe coding, weird side projects, soccer, stand-up, or the best tacos in Austin. The DMs are open.

LinkedIn /in/karan-prasad
Email karan.prasad@my.utexas.edu