Profile banner
Rohan Puranik

Rohan Puranik

Partner at WestWave Capital — early-stage deep‑tech investor

rohanpuranik
San Francisco, California
Joined May 2025
Favicon imagewestwavecapital.com
Favicon imagemedium.com
Favicon imagelinkedin.com

Network

4.5K connections
💡
Tech Startup Founders
🧠
AI & Deep Tech Founders
💰
Venture Capital Investors
🔒
AI & Cybersecurity Leaders
🎓
StartX & Stanford Founders
👔
Established Professionals
🤖
Robotics & Automation Founders

Summary

Early‑engineer turned investor: Rohan built and led technology at startups (co‑founder & CTO of MindSumo, engineering roles at Palm and other early companies), then transitioned into venture investing where he leverages hands‑on product and engineering experience to help founders at pre‑seed and seed stages. wellfound+1
Deep‑tech, security and robotics focus: As a Partner at WestWave Capital he helps craft investment theses and sources deals in deep technical areas—security, cloud and edge infrastructure, robotics and other enterprise deep tech—arguing for deep domain expertise and founder empathy when investing early. westwavecapital+1
Strong Stanford researcher / HCI background: During his Stanford undergraduate years he contributed to published research on gaze‑based input techniques, indicating an undergraduate research background and technical depth in HCI and systems. stanford+1
Active in the Stanford startup community: Longstanding involvement with StartX (advisor and short internal strategy role) and mentoring founders demonstrates commitment to the Stanford founder ecosystem and to early‑stage company building. westwavecapital+1

Work

Education

Projects

Writing

Improving the Accuracy of Gaze Input for Interaction

January 1, 2008

Conference paper (ETRA 2008) presenting techniques to improve gaze as an input modality (saccade detection, smoothing, and interaction techniques); Rohan appears as a co‑author while at Stanford.

Favicon imagegraphics.stanford.edu

What Time is?

Medium post by Rohan Puranik (personal writing on Medium).

Favicon imagemedium.com