Week 0: Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Saajan Parekh, and welcome to my Week 0 Senior Project Blog! Over the next ten weeks, I will be researching how artificial intelligence is changing the way venture capital investors evaluate startups. In this blog, I will introduce my research topic, explain why it matters, and outline what I plan to accomplish in the first week of my project.

Importance of the Subject

Venture capital plays a major role in shaping innovation. Because many startups fail, investors must carefully analyze companies before investing. This process is known as due diligence, where investors evaluate factors such as the founding team, market opportunity, customer demand, and financial projections. Traditionally, due diligence relied heavily on manual research, founder interviews, and market analysis. However, the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is beginning to change how this process works. Investors can now analyze large datasets and evaluate user behavior much faster than before. At the same time, the increased use of AI raises new questions about how venture capital firms interpret data, assess risk, and determine which companies truly have long-term potential.

For this reason, my research question is:

How does AI affect the due-diligence process for startups, and how has it changed relative to prior processes before AI dominated the analysis?

Research Project and Advisors

To explore this question, I will be working closely with professionals in the venture capital industry at a firm named Bright Ventures. My project will involve learning about how venture capital firms evaluate early-stage startups and how those evaluation methods have evolved as AI tools become more common in the investment process. Additionally, I will gather insights through interviews and research on venture capital evaluation frameworks through a survey that I will send to multiple professionals using Bright Ventures connections.

Week 1 Future Plan

During Week 1, I plan to begin developing a framework for analyzing how venture capital firms perform due diligence. Specifically, I will:

• Research how venture capital due diligence worked before widespread AI adoption

• Identify key evaluation criteria investors use when assessing startups

By building this framework early in the project, I hope to shape my understanding of how AI tools are reshaping investment decisions. I am excited to begin this research and share my progress in the coming weeks. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to updating you in Week 1!

For those of you who want to view my on-site placement company information, here is the link to their website: https://www.brightventures.io/

For those of you who want to read over my original proposal for this senior project, here is the link to the google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NF_aQtRqQuY7pa9DqDAviE6WMsPyzAEY6EBb3JytlYE/edit?usp=sharing