Three Penn Engineering Undergraduates Selected as KPCB Engineering Fellows

Rajat Bhageria (W/ROBO’18), Samantha Chung (NETS’19) and Joseph Gao (CIS’18/CCGT’19) have been selected as 2017 KPCB Engineering Fellows. The KPCB Fellowship Program was developed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a world-leading venture capital firm located in Silicon Valley, as the firm’s initiative to bring the top one percent of engineering students into its portfolio companies. These students were selected as Fellows from a pool of 2000 applicants.

The program offers outstanding college students from across the United States an opportunity to gain significant experience at Silicon Valley startups by working on unique and challenging technical problems, and to develop new relationships that are meaningful to their careers. Over the course of a summer, the Fellows will develop their skills and be mentored by an engineering executive within the company. Fellows will also be invited to attend events held by KPCB and events hosted by portfolio companies, where they can meet other talented engineering students, network with technology luminaries and explore the San Francisco Bay Area.

Bhageria will be working with Indiegogo, an international crowdfunding website that allows users to solicit funds for an idea, charity, or start-up business. The site runs on a rewards-based system in which donors, investors, or customers who are willing help to fund a project or product can donate and receive a gift, rather than an equity stake in the company.

Chung will be joining the team at Airbnb, a community marketplace for people to list, discover, and book unique accommodations around the world online or from a mobile phone or tablet.

Gao will spend the summer working with Slack, a startup that launched cloud-based team collaboration software allowing businesses to create real-time messaging, archiving and searching for all communication throughout their company.
Since its founding in 1972, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers has backed entrepreneurs in more than 500 ventures, including AOL, Amazon.com, Citrix, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Genentech, Google, Intuit, Juniper Networks, Netscape, Sun, Symantec, Verisign and Zynga.