Vetted Chief Executive Officers in California

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

Anand Vallamsetla

Screened

Executive Engineering Leader & Systems Architect specializing in AI, cloud platforms, and FinTech

Los Altos, CA26y exp

“Operator with 20+ years experience and a business degree who led the build and deployment of a Medicaid fraud investigation product for Texas HHSC OIG, cutting investigation time from ~2 years to 90 days. Has government go-to-market experience and has raised a friends-and-family round for an earlier startup concept; now pivoting toward a healthcare-focused venture after a cofounder with core tech could not continue.”

william chen

Screened

Executive game technology leader specializing in product innovation and live-service platforms

Los Angeles, CA27y exp

“Serial entrepreneur with multiple successful exits who has previously raised several rounds and worked with accelerators. Currently building an AI-powered life simulation universe with prompt-based creation and a self-evolving persistent world, backed by completed market research and an MVP in development.”

“AI-native engineer who says 100% of current development is done through coding agents and reports roughly 10x productivity gains. Currently building 'AI TV,' a production video-generation system with multi-agent orchestration, including a motion-graphics pipeline where agents handle high-level design, low-level implementation, and iterative review. Particularly strong in designing codebases and workflows so AI systems can effectively use architectural and product context.”

“Investor/sourcer from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital focused on vertical SaaS, with a structured system for high-volume founder outreach (30–50/week) and thesis-driven messaging. Has originated cold outbound conversations (e.g., Elevate, Rockbot) and owned end-to-end diligence work including SaaS metric analysis, operating model building, and internal decision memos/partner updates.”

“Serial entrepreneur and 5x founder with 20+ years spanning VC-backed startups and large public companies, including multiple successful fundraises and exits. Currently evaluating new ventures in AI-driven health and purpose-driven smart glasses, with a thoughtful founder lens on asymmetric impact, mission alignment, and structural advantage.”

JR deSouza

Screened

Executive product and marketing leader specializing in global consumer technology and media

Los Angeles, CA26y exp

“Veteran product executive, founder, and former Olympic/World Champion swimmer with leadership experience spanning TiVo, Disney, DreamWorks Animation, Samsung, and Outex. He was the original product manager for TiVo, helped drive the shift from push to pull content consumption, built a Disney product idea into a $20M line, and now applies AI broadly across product, marketing, sales, and support for his patented physical product business.”

“Serial game publishing builder who has helped raise $300M+ across multiple rounds for four publishers. Deeply embedded in the SF/LA VC ecosystem and actively advises clients through pitch rounds, emphasizing data-driven narratives, timing, and investor relationship-building in highly scrutinized markets.”