Ate with Eight

who are we

mira amin, founder

cooking is my biggest passion. my journey started during my junior year of college, where i learned how to cook out of necessity when i was no longer on my college's meal plan. somewhere along the way, i completely fell in love with it. i read cookbooks from front to back, watch every cooking show in existence, and pester my family members for their recipes. i loved the way food brought everyone together, and without having to say it in words, it simply told my community that "i care." perhaps most special, however, is how cooking connected me even more than i thought could be possible with my mother and both my grandmothers.

outside of the kitchen, i studied chemical & biomolecular engineering at johns hopkins, got involved with the entrepreneur ecosystem there, worked a couple gigs in growth equity, and am now a full-time early-stage investor at bessemer venture partners. 8w8 is where those two worlds meet: my love for cooking+hosting and being a ~professional connector~, if you will.

current & past cohosts

maha malik

rayouf alhumedhi

maha grew up in pakistan, where doors were open, meals were shared freely, and it was never unusual for strangers or neighbors to be pulled in and fed like family. she spent a decade at bain before joining bessemer, where she is now a leader in bvp's pre-seed and seed investing efforts. she is also the current co-host of ate with eight, and we collaborated on dinners 3, 4, and 5 in q1 2026. these days, maha is a dessert and baking enthusiast. she made a banana pudding at our fifth dinner that is genuinely better than magnolia bakery (ifykyk). she's also an avid writer and traveler, which nourishes her love for new cuisines and bringing people together.

hailing from riyadh, but growing up in berlin and vienna, rayouf is a designer turned investor at bessemer who loves all things creative ai. she also is the creator of the hijabi emoji 🧕🏻. we teamed up to host women in the startup ecosystem in nyc for a ~ girl dinner ~ on a crisp friday night in october 2025. learn more about rayouf here.

the why

i really love to cook, and i really love to host. so ate with eight (8w8) started pretty selfishly: it scratched the itch. but i decided to focus on the nyc startup community because i kept feeling that the cohesive tech community that sf has was missing here. the city is full of talented people, building incredible things, but everyone is somewhat living separate lives (which could be both a good or bad thing). so i thought, what if we could bring people together over a casual, home-cooked meal?

this idea was born out of wanting to build community as someone still a little new to nyc, staying authentic, and pursuing what excites you. and maybe being lucky enough to sit at the table (or at least be a fly on the wall) among people who inspire you.

every few weeks, we host 8 guests at my tiny 500 sq ft studio apartment in nyc for a 3-course, entirely homecooked meal. this is a casual, intimate, and curated dinner, and there's really no shoptalk (we promise that we are in no way trying to triangulate your ARR - VCs get a bad rap for this)!

key philosophies

one table, one conversation. eight is the magic number. it's small enough that everyone stays in one conversation, and by dessert, nobody's a stranger. plus candidly, eight is the most amount of people that can comfortably fit in my tiny apartment.

the mix matters. after 5 dinners now, one of our favorite things has been putting together people with completely different roles, different types and stages of companies they work at, different ages, and different paths into tech. there's something special about the diversity of people working in such a dynamic environment and living in a city like new york. we've had some of the most unique conversations at our past dinners because of that.

themed dinners. sometimes we curate the guest list around a theme. so far we've hosted dinners for johns hopkins alum, women in the startup ecosystem, and FDEs and deployment strategists. other times, we just gather people who work at any startup in nyc (regardless of whether they are a founder, operator, or engineer).