Manish Srivastava @ZETA_PLACE

@svembu Thanks, I appreciate it. I will send you the deck over DM.

India has built homegrown networks for payments and communication. I believe education & opportunity discovery needs one too. Today students depend on Google, YouTube, portals and agents to find opportunities, while institutions keep paying Google, Meta, portals and intermediaries to reach them. I am building ZETAPLACE. An Indian built global education & opportunity network around a persistent student identity, with AI for personalized discovery, matching and trusted education intelligence. Our goal is to reduce dependence on intermediaries and create direct relationships between students, institutions and employers. I am currently raising our pre seed round. Would appreciate knowing the best way to share ZETAPLACE with you for investment consideration.

@sridharfyi This resonates. The idea I started with has evolved a lot through conversations, building and putting the product into the market. The founder has to keep learning and adapting without losing conviction about the problem being solved.

What if the biggest problem in education is not lack of opportunity, but that students and institutions still have to keep finding each other from scratch? Students search Google, YouTube, portals and agents.Institutions keep paying Google, Meta, portals and agents to reach those same students.Both sides are searching. Both sides are paying. I am building ZETAPLACE.A direct education & opportunity network around a persistent, student controlled identity. AI will help personalize discovery, match students with relevant institutions, employers and opportunities, enable multilingual guidance, and over time power a permissioned intelligence layer where knowledge can retain its source, contributor and usage rights. Less dependence on intermediaries. Better discovery. Direct relationships. ZETAPLACE is live. I am raising a $500K pre-seed round. If you are a founder, angel, VC or operator who believes education and early talent need new infrastructure, I would love to connect. zetaplace.com

Students search Google, YouTube, portals and agents for opportunities. Institutions pay Google, Meta, portals and agents to find those same students. Both sides are searching. Both sides are paying. ZETAPLACE is building a direct education & opportunity network around a persistent student identity. AI will help students discover the right opportunities, personalize recommendations, enable multilingual guidance and improve matching between students, institutions and employers. As part of our platform we are also building a permissioned intelligence layer where knowledge can carry its source, contributor and usage rights. Less dependence on intermediaries. Better discovery. Direct relationships. We are live now and raising $500K pre-seed. If you invest in EdTech, HR tech, marketplaces or AI infrastructure or know someone who does Iwould love to connect. zetaplace.com

Why should recruiting begin with a job post? By then, companies are already starting from zero.Same sourcing. Same job boards. Same race for the same talent. And now, hundreds of AI generated applications. What if employers discovered talent years earlier while students are building skills, projects, competing, interning and evolving and built relationships before a role even existed? That is the employer side of ZETAPLACE.A resume is a snapshot. Talent is a journey. Build the relationship first. Hire when the need arrives.

This makes me wonder whether the longer term answer is bigger than better email agents. UPI lets us send money without sharing bank account details. What if digital identity worked similarly for information? At ZETAPLACE, students have a ZETA ID. Today it enables communication without exposing their email. We are building toward a model where information, opportunities and eventually text, documents, audio or video can move against that identity with permissions controlled by the user. Maybe agents should not need access to our entire inbox. They should get access only to what our identity permits them to access.

Life does that too. Tough lessons, unexpected surprises, new directions. The only constant is that we keep evolving. Some people understand one version of us but not the next. Some leave, some arrive later, and a few stay for the whole journey. We should never stop evolving just to remain familiar to everyone.

Why to post a job and wait for applications when you can build your talent pipeline before the role even opens. Identify talent, engage early, guide, build relationships over time. With ZETAPLACE, Employers can continuously discover, track and engage relevant students and early talent instead of starting from scratch every time they hire. Build the confidence first and hire when the need arrives.

Great initiative. But opportunities like this should not depend on a student happening to see the right post at the right time. Imagine if government programmes could directly reach relevant students across states, schools and backgrounds through a persistent, student controlled identity. That is the discovery infrastructure we are building with ZETAPLACE. Helping opportunities find students, not only asking students to keep searching for them.

Funny, but here is a real question If AI is writing one side and reviewing on the other side, knowing where the knowledge came from starts to matter a lot more. At ZETAPLACE. We are building an education & opportunity marketplace connecting students, institutions and employers directly. Alongside that, we are working on an AI layer where knowledge can carry its source, contributor and permission to use. I believe that kind of lineage will become increasingly important as AI is interacting with AI.

@RajanAnandan Kaboom indeed. The next question for agentic AI may be trust.When an agent acts on knowledge, can it tell us where that knowledge came from, who contributed it and whether it was permissioned for use? That is the AI layer we are building into ZETAPLACE for education.

@YCInsight I believe the biggest advantage of YC is not the money. It is trust. Investors take the meeting. Customers pay attention. Talent responds. A founder suddenly gets access that might otherwise take years to build. I am in the journey so i can relate to it very well.

@julianweisser This resonates. As a solo founder, you spend a long time pulling the thread before anyone else can see what you see. Then slowly the product, market and timing start connecting. The hard part is staying with it long enough.

Thanks Martin for the validation on persistent student identity. ZETAPLACE is live, and now i am in discussion with institutions for commercial agreements.I am also narrowing the raise toward EdTech & HR tech angels rather than pitching too broadly. Your guidance will be much appreciated.

Every admissions cycle, institutions pay Google, Meta, portals and agents to find students again. Employers do the same for early talent. ZETAPLACE is building a privacy first identity & opportunity layer for direct, persistent engagement. We are raising a $500K pre-seed round.

733M Indians under 30. This is not just a demographic dividend, it is an infrastructure opportunity. Students should not have to depend on Google, YouTube, Meta, portals and agents to discover every opportunity, and institutions should not have to keep paying those same channels to reach the same students again and again. India needs a homegrown education & opportunity network built around persistent student identity, direct discovery and trusted AI. At ZETAPLACE, we are building that marketplace with a permissioned intelligence layer where the system can know who contributed the knowledge, where it came from, whether it was permitted for use, and who should receive credit. Not just AI that gives answers. AI where every answer can carry its lineage. That is what we are building at ZETAPLACE.

@sridharfyi Interesting spread. I believe stage, clarity and founder execution all carry weight. Curious how you think about founders who are already live but early commercially?

Interesting to see the moat here is the data. We are building ZETAPLACE around a similar thesis in education. A permissioned intelligence layer where knowledge carries its lineage who contributed it, where it came from, and whether it can be used. Curious if Accel is exploring this kind of vertical AI in education too?

What if every learning experience added to a student’s lifelong opportunity profile? Virtual labs, projects, simulations and experiential learning should not disappear after the session. They should help students build a persistent record of skills, interests and achievements that can connect them to future education and career opportunities. That is one of the ideas behind ZETAPLACE.

What if innovation could make opportunity find the student, not just the other way around? India should not have to rent student discovery forever. Today, students search Google, YouTube and portals, while institutions pay Meta, Google, agents and platforms to reach them. The future should be a homegrown, direct opportunity network built on persistent student identity. That is what we are building at ZETAPLACE.