Fundraising Fox

Kunal Punera

Founder

Founder at Bluebirds

Mountain View, California, United States

FoundedBluebirds · YC

About

Kunal held leadership roles in AI at LinkedIn overseeing teams across Recruiter, Premium, and Learning products, and previously worked as a founding engineer at RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce). He co-founded Bento Labs in 2014 and holds a PhD in machine learning from the University of Texas at Austin, with prior research experience at Yahoo! on NLP.

LinkedIn ↗

Founder at BluebirdsYC W23

Intro paths

YC

Kunal went through Y Combinator (Winter 2023) — any YC alum in your network can reach them through the YC community.

GP

Their group partner at YC was Jared Friedman, YC Group Partner — the partner who ran Bluebirds's batch and knows the company first-hand. YC profile ↗

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In turn, Kunal can intro founders to Bluebirds's investors below.

Bluebirds's investors · 4

1984 Ventures Management, LlcLightspeed Venture PartnersSoma CapitalY Combinator

Co-founders at Bluebirds

RPRohan Punamia
Rohan PunamiaFounder

Experience

  1. SalesforceVice President of Engineering, Agentforce Salescurrent2025 — present
  2. Bluebirds (YC W'23) (Acquired by Salesforce in Aug 2025)Co-founder & CTO2023 — 2025San Francisco, California, United States
  3. LinkedInDirector Of Engineering2020 — 2023Sunnyvale
  4. GoogleEngineering Manager / Staff Software Engineer2016 — 2020Mountain View
  5. Bento LabsCo-Founder and CTO2014 — 2016San Francisco Bay Area
  6. A Big Data start-upAdvisor2013 — 2015
  7. RelateIQData Products Engineering2012 — 2014
  8. Yahoo!Senior Research Scientist2007 — 2012

Education

  1. The University of Texas at AustinPhD, Machine learning, web mining2002 — 2007

Skills & more

Data Mining29Machine Learning38Information Retrieval15Text Mining12Natural Language Processing13Recommender Systems2Web Mining4Information Extraction3Text Classification1Text Analytics1Algorithms11Collaborative Filtering1
+12 moreComputational LinguisticsApache PigArtificial IntelligenceSentiment AnalysisBig DataScalabilityDistributed SystemsSemantic WebHadoopMapReduceSearchComputer Science

From Kunal's professional profile.

Founder mafias

Y Combinator mafia8,668

Also came through, then founded or led a company.

Sam AltmanPresidentFounded LooptFred EhrsamYC Summer 2012Founded CoinbaseMatt HuangYC Winter 2011Founded HotspotsTrae StephensYC Winter 2022Founded PursuitDelian AsparouhovYC Summer 2014Founded Nightingale +1Justin KanYC Winter 2018Founded Rye +3

+ 8,661 more

The University of Texas at Austin mafia91

Also came through, then founded or led a company.

Michael GortonPhysics & Engineering w minor in EnglishFounded Recuro Health +1Dane HurtubiseBSFounded Spoken +1Michael RoyzenBachelor of Science - BSFounded Standard Signal +1Matt RileyMSFounded Fixture +1Brandon AlexanderBachelor of Science (B.S.)Founded Inevitable TechJamie BacherPh.D.Founded Boost Biomes

+ 84 more

Same school

Also attended The University of Texas at Austin348

Viswa SankaranarayananVenture Partner at Monta Vista CapitalTodd KleinManaging Partner, Revolution Growth at RevolutionSapna MehtaInvestor at RevolutionAaron LiuPrincipal at NorthzoneAndrew ScottSenior Finance Manager at GreycroftMichael HsuSenior Associate at Sapphire Ventures

+ 342 more

Shared employers

Also worked at Salesforce232

Mark SusterManaging Partner at Upfront VenturesViviana FagaGeneral Partner at Felicis VenturesJob SimonVenture Partner and CTO at Monta Vista CapitalWesley BarrowPartner at Correlation VenturesAlex BardManaging Director at Redpoint VenturesKarthik ChakkarapaniInvestor at Foundation Capital

+ 226 more

Also worked at LinkedIn173

Peter ThielCo-founder & Partner at Founders FundReid HoffmanCo-founder of LinkedIn; Partner at GreylockKeith RaboisManaging Director at Khosla VenturesDavid SzeAdvisory Partner at GreylockJeremy LevinePartner at Bessemer Venture PartnersDeep NisharInvestment Team at General Catalyst

+ 167 more

Also worked at Google1,533

Ron ConwayFounder of SV AngelElad GilSolo general partner investing through Gil CapitalBrian SingermanCo-founder of GPx; Partner Emeritus at Founders FundJess LeePartner and Chief Product Officer at Sequoia CapitalTomasz TunguzFounder & General Partner at Theory VenturesHunter WalkCo-founder & Partner at Homebrew

+ 1,527 more

Also worked at Yahoo!284

Jess LeePartner and Chief Product Officer at Sequoia CapitalMike SpeiserManaging Director at Sutter Hill VenturesFrédérique DameInvestor at GV (Google Ventures)Marcie VuPartner at GreycroftIsabelle PhelpsPartner at Lerer HippeauPaul LevineOperating Partner at Sapphire Ventures

+ 278 more