Meet the HQ team

The Dorm Room Fund is thrilled to announce its 2021 headquarters team. This will be the third year that DRF has welcomed college, master’s and doctoral students into the fund to work alongside some of the country’s best founders and investors. Over the years, many of the HQ team have gone on to become top startup founders and venture capitalists.

The HQ team works behind the scenes and makes the first call for student founders: How can they help founders? How can founders find us? How do they support teammates to help them with diligence? They represent five universities and places as diverse as Canada, Australia and Guam.

Two former HQ members, Anish Agnihotri and Rennah Weng, have been named Managing Partners, in recognition of their commitment to DRF. The managing partners handle almost anything that helps the DRF network.

This year, 160 applicants applied for six positions. For the first time, the new HQ team welcomes onboard a “Head of Social” person to expand DRF’s social media.

It is our hope that the Dorm Room Fund HQ team will take the fund to new heights. Thank you to our graduating partners: Tanthai Pongstien, Arun Kirubarajan, Jeremy Navarro, Alex Becker, and Kai Furbeck.

Here are the newest HQ members:

Melissa Li: Head of Community

Melissa is excited to supercharge Dorm Room Fund’s awesome founder, investment partner and alumni networks. She brings her learnings from building Connections at Harvard Undergraduate Capital Partners, where she introduced new initiatives to accelerate startup growth and relationship-building. Melissa also established a Power Hours program at Harvard Ventures to connect underserved female-identifying student founders with Entrepreneurs-in-Residence, and sees endless opportunities to grow mentorship in the DRF Community. Fun fact: Melissa hails from Sydney, Australia. She’s all about beach walks and Aussie coffee culture.

In her spare time, find Melissa listening to Folklore on repeat, reading about organisational leadership, understanding the timing for a just-ripe-enough avocado, and eating far too much pasta. She can’t wait to meet the DRF community, and she’s always up for a chat!

Britney Zhang: Head of Social

Britney is a rising junior at UC Berkeley Haas studying Business Administration. She is passionate about integrating storytelling in consumer media and technology. Britney is currently interning at Slack as a Sales Development Intern.

Prior to DRF, Britney was running platforms and content at Muse Capital. At UC Berkeley, she is involved in the Haas student government and the Female Founders + Funders community. Outside of school and work, Britney can be found exploring the Bay Area food scene, designing, or hiking with her pet husky.

Fun fact: Britney has worked with 3 DRF-affiliated founders in the past and was an ambassador for Snackpass (#DRF4Life).

Ansh Nanda: Head of Ops

Ansh is a rising junior at Duke University studying Computer Science & Psychology. Recently he was on a gap semester and led KiranaKart (YC W21) as Chief Product Officer.

Previously Ansh founded and sold a nonprofit climate tech project called YouChangeEarth, lead technology for Campus Enterprises at Duke, one of the oldest and largest completely student run businesses, and was part of the Melissa & Doug Fellowship at Duke. When he’s not building, Ansh loves eating spicy food, watching basketball, and talking to founders!

Rahul Bathija: Head of Growth

Rahul is a rising senior at Western University in Canada (eh) and is interested in all things growth marketing, design, and early-stage startups. He’s coming off a gap year where he completed a 10 month internship on Figma’s marketing team, and is currently exploring how technology can be used to empower more people.

Rahul has also spent time consulting with Divisional Growth and enjoys helping early-stage companies solve their marketing problems. Outside of work, he’s a die-hard Toronto Raptors fan, loves cars and is a foodie who enjoys traveling and learning about different cultures!

Tina Teng: Head of Design

Tina is a senior at UC Berkeley passionate about creating experiences at the intersection of design, data, and social good. At UC Berkeley, she is involved with Blockchain at Berkeley, where she works with blockchain companies on designing user experience and user interface.

Tina cares deeply about sustainability and education, so she works with nonprofits in the sector to help magnify their impact in her free time. When she is not playing around on Figma, she can be found cooking, playing board games, and spending time with her friends and family. Tina is super excited to work with Dorm Room Fund’s incredible student founder, investing partner, and alumni network!

Anne Wen: Head of Content

Anne, a Princeton junior, recently co-directed TigerLaunch, the nation’s largest student-run pitch contest. During the pandemic, she worked full-time as a news reporter on Guam, her home island. She’s written about almost every subject imaginable, ranging from village news to education, crime and even viral TikTok stars.

When she’s not talking to strangers, she’s talking about Guam. In her free time, she converts Celsius to Fahrenheit, but after many failed attempts, she binges Chinese dramas. Fun fact: She’s read about DRF investment, FiscalNote, because Princeton loves reminding her that founder Tim Hwang is an alum. Go Tigers!

Anish Agnihotri: Managing Partner

Anish is a freshman at the University of Waterloo studying Computer Science and Economics. He’s passionate about blockchain, cryptoeconomics, and building better financial tooling to connect the world — a goal he works towards at Polychain Capital. Prior, Anish interned at 1Password, working on build-verification testing. In his free time, Anish enjoys swimming and spending sleepless nights building hackathons.

Rennah Weng: Managing Partner

Rennah is a rising senior at Columbia University studying computer science and entrepreneurship. As a first-gen student, she has a passion for social impact tech and is working towards increasing accessibility for under-served communities. Currently, she works at Amazon and joined Correlation One to apply her AI and data analytics skills to tackle societal problems in healthcare, education, and income disparity.

To achieve her goals on campus, Rennah is part of Columbia Social Entrepreneurship Group and has launched a product in partnership with the Brooklyn borough president to protect 100+ low-income tenants in NYC from heating violations. In her free time, she enjoys learning ukulele and watching k-dramas. When she feels down, she loves messing around with her twin brothers.

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