From the Bay Area’s boom-and-bust hiring cycle to the relentless pace of AI innovation, Avatara AI founder and CEO Vasudha Badri-Paul reflects on why she left a long corporate career to build her own company—and how her new East Bay accelerator aims to reshape where the next generation of AI startups takes root.
Back in 2023, when Vasudha Badri-Paul founded Avatara AI—a San Francisco–based firm that helps businesses design and manage AI solutions—she says she was responding to the signs of the times. “AI is advancing at such a rapid pace that failing to continuously update your skills can leave you obsolete almost overnight.”
But there was another reason that led Badri-Paul to leave her long corporate career and build something new: the Bay Area’s boom-and-bust hiring cycle. Badri-Paul says, “I would say that the job lifespan in Bay Area is two years and it’s the same across sectors—corporate, tech, marketing, sales, everywhere.”
She speaks from experience as an industry insider, having worked at multinationals including Pfizer, Microsoft, GE, Cisco, Intel, and many others.
“In Bay Area,” she says, “there is a constant churn. Reasons range from – no funding to restructuring, and people are asked to leave every few years, and that explains why job hopping is pretty common.” She adds, “This recurring cycle in the Bay Area job market that results in redundancies, gets tiring after a while. Everyone is watching their back, there is no margin for humanity. Every time the market goes down, big corporates let go of people.”
Frustrated with this recurring cycle, Badri-Paul says, “I took a hard stance and thought of building a company of my own.”
Badri-Paul was among the early innovators to enter the AI space. She says, “I was lucky to get into AI early-on and realize the empowering ways it is going to impact every aspect of corporate working.” At Avatara, Badri-Paul oversees efforts to build, deploy, and enable enterprises to operationalize AI, delivering end-to-end AI, GenAI, and computer vision solutions with a strong focus on responsible and ethical AI practices.
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Beyond the rapidly changing AI landscape, Badri-Paul is also excited about an emerging opportunity taking shape in East Bay, California.
Badri-Paul has just introduced Velocity East Accelerator. She describes the venture as a place where East Bay, California’s AI future will take wing. She explains, “So, in California, Silicon Valley is where all the tech happens. It is the start-up empire. Despite this boom, some parts of Silicon Valley remain underrepresented and off-late we have been seeing a shift in the trend.”
She says, “East Bay has kind of taking-off.” Through her newest venture, Velocity East, Badri-Paul is aiming to create a hub of opportunities and ideas.
A long-time California resident, Badri-Paul has seen how migration patterns have led to rapid development across the region. She says, “During Covid, a builder built about 20k homes in East Bay. A lot of migration happened during the time.” She adds, “Over time, we noticed that while there is a boom in newer residents, there was no formal atmosphere to nurture start-ups in the area, no Y combinators – basically no ecosystem to help build ideas.”
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It was with this vision that Velocity East, an AI accelerator, was launched in San Ramon.
On how the accelerator will help bring focus to East Bay in Northern California—an area often overshadowed by the success of Silicon Valley—Badri-Paul says, “We are not bringing in any other tech program. Instead, we are announcing that some of the most path-breaking AI companies can be built right here. We are talking about areas such as Fremont, Concord as well as across Alameda and Contra Costa counties.”
Velocity East is powered by The AI Foundry community and helps accelerate early-stage AI startups through mentorship, resources, and access to capital. She adds, “We also build bridges between East Bay innovators and the broader Bay Area ecosystem and create pathways for underrepresented founders to lead in AI.”
The larger vision is to shine a spotlight on this part of Northern California and establish San Ramon and Bishop Ranch as a legitimate hub for AI innovation.