Vetted Executive & Leadership Professionals in the Bay Area

“COO/CFO and startup co-founder (Gratia, Inc.) who has built operational infrastructure end-to-end across finance, contracts, resourcing, and talent management. Has scaled multiple early-stage businesses (<$20M revenue) and supported outcomes including a sale to a private equity-backed strategic buyer, with a pragmatic approach centered on clear processes, stakeholder alignment, and leveraging tools like QuickBooks, Bill.com, HubSpot, and Salesforce.”

“Hands-on engineering leader currently at Vianai (GenAI enterprise applications) building AI-assisted data exploration/insights products with Python and React. Previously Corporate VP of Digital Health at Samsung Electronics, where they helped close key partner deals by demonstrating API-driven openness and led a major Samsung Health modernization from monolith to microservices for horizontal scalability and faster, safer iteration.”

“Engineering leader/player-coach who built and validated a preference-based recommendation engine using clustering, including generating test data to evaluate how clusters evolve over time. Has SRE/DevOps experience and has owned production incidents end-to-end (logging-driven RCA and refactoring patterns that failed at large data scale). Emphasizes quality and platform stability via unit, integration, and load testing, and has managed performance via regular 1:1s and PIPs.”

Bill Eichen

Screened

Executive product and business leader specializing in AI, semiconductors, and growth strategy

Palo Alto, CA23y exp

“Candidate indicated they have a business plan or startup and referenced Gimmelfund.com, a VC fund in Palo Alto. They also stated they are very familiar with the venture capital, studio, and accelerator landscape, but provided limited detail during the screen.”

SHIVA SANDY

Screened

Executive CTO/CIO specializing in FinTech, cloud transformation, and cybersecurity

Walnut Creek, CA27y exp

“Banking/credit-union technology executive (CTO/CTIO) who has led modernization and product delivery through major change, including a post-merger roadmap that helped grow a credit union from $600M to $1.5B in 3 years. Hands-on leader who drove cloud microservices/API architecture, introduced CI/CD, and accelerated releases from quarterly to weekly while scaling teams and operating effectively with distributed/remote orgs.”

“Co-founded Aethernet Inc., a B2B IoT connectivity platform with a usage-based revenue model and direct sales motion to device manufacturers. Bootstrapped with founder capital and strict cost control, with angel interest pending technical validation; developed the product through multi-year architecture experiments to deliver measurable latency/reliability/scalability/cost advantages versus DevOps-heavy incumbents like AWS IoT Core.”

Jim Woodroffe

Screened

Executive Engineering Leader (CTO/VP) specializing in scaling platforms, AI, and cloud infrastructure

San Francisco, CA24y exp

“Entrepreneurial operator who previously built an AI context layer for personal communication/relationships and has worked with a New York-based venture group to evaluate early-stage ideas from both technical and business angles. Currently exploring broad startup opportunities and collaborating with 2–3 early-stage companies, with a structured approach to assessing market outcomes, competition, and team fit.”

“Founder building an enterprise agentic AI startup who has already raised about $100K (friends & family plus self-funding). Has prior and current experience engaging VCs (including outreach to both large and small firms) and emphasizes demo-driven pitching, enterprise customer validation, and targeting billion-dollar market opportunities.”

“Amazon engineering leader (15+ years) targeting Senior Manager/Director roles, with deep ownership of contact-center latency and reliability initiatives. Shipped a global production improvement cutting call latency 30–40% and led a complex Citrix SDK integration, including incident response and a backward-compatible rollout strategy to protect existing customers while enabling new features.”

“Operations/Continuous Improvement leader with 25 years of Lean/Kaizen experience, including roles at Danaher and 10x Genomics. Known for building enterprise operating rhythms (True North + daily management) and developing internal CI certification programs, while delivering measurable quality and cycle-time gains (e.g., NCR/MRB lead time cut 47→14 days and FPY improvements via global test-equipment relocation).”

Dhaya Lakshminarayanan

Screened

Executive Operations Leader specializing in AI, climate tech, and high-growth organizations

San Francisco, CA20y exp

“Operator who has repeatedly stepped into founder-level, cross-functional ownership at startups—running full HR (recruiting, onboarding, benefits) with AI-driven process automation, and later serving as interim VP People & Culture during an executive transition. Also managed cap table, 409A, equity grants, and day-to-day investor relations, and built company-wide ELT goals/KPIs and operating rhythms tied to board-approved strategy.”

Sammy Datwani

Screened

Executive biotech leader specializing in microfluidics, diagnostics, and life science tools

Pleasanton, CA25y exp

“Biotech founder building a de-novo protein sequencing company, originally incubated by Versant Ventures and now focused on life science tools and clinical diagnostics. Has raised capital from institutional VCs, strategic investors, and a foundation, and brings unusual ecosystem depth through mentoring at IndieBio, Berkeley SkyDeck, and Biotools Innovator, plus board service with Life Science Angels and VC diligence advisory work.”