Vetted Chief Technology Officers

Robert Wheeler

Screened

Executive Technology Leader (CTO) specializing in cloud, AI/ML, and scalable product platforms

Manhattan, USA25y exp

“Technical leader and hands-on engineer with 20+ years of experience who has previously raised funding and exited a venture. Currently bootstrapping a new AI-direction startup with personal and family capital, leveraging structured financial planning and a relationship-driven approach to investor outreach.”

Martin Wells

Screened

Executive AI & Technology leader specializing in AI, streaming, and gaming platforms

Seattle / Tacoma, WA18y exp

“Worked at an accelerator and served as an Entrepreneur in Residence, providing CTO and general founder support to startups. Although not pursuing entrepreneurship personally, they bring direct exposure to early-stage company building and accelerator ecosystems.”

“Multi-time founding team member who helped raise capital at HotSchedules and Axial Shift, contributing investor-facing narratives around cost to serve, technology vision, scalability, and market opportunity. Motivated by building companies from the ground up, they bring a hands-on zero-to-one mindset paired with a strong understanding of what angels and VCs need to see in a scalable, standards-compliant product.”

“Hands-on architect/executive who built a virtual sales platform from scratch with real-time video delivery and autoscaling global video nodes, while also operating at the stakeholder/roadmap level. Previously scaled IT as Arbonne grew from ~$11M to $1B in annual sales and led large digital transformation efforts including a 70-person team for princesshouse.com; also advises startups (e.g., SocialBud) on product expansion and roadmaps.”

“Engineering/technology leader (CTO-style) with experience scaling orgs and running distributed teams across four continents for over a decade. Led a high-stakes modernization of a securities trading platform at Wedbush—migrating from monolith to microservices on AWS with zero-downtime constraints—driving 45% execution performance improvement and enabling 25% market share growth. Emphasizes business-aligned roadmaps, build-vs-buy rigor, and scalable engineering practices/culture.”

Ben Coats

Screened

Executive technology leader specializing in startups, SaaS, and cloud-native platforms

Newport, VT24y exp

“Early-stage technical advisor working fractionally with an AI health tech startup focused on autism therapy, helping turn a functional prototype into a deployable enterprise application. Brings a mix of hands-on coding, infrastructure/Terraform experience, and founder-oriented thinking around market opportunity, studio fit, and right-to-win.”

“Backend/cloud engineer who built an AWS serverless IoT system that computes Bluetooth beacon locations from telemetry using heavy scientific Python (NumPy/SciPy/pandas) packaged as Dockerized Lambda, integrated with Java microservices and scheduled batch orchestration. Has deep AWS delivery experience (CI/CD with Code* tools, CloudFormation, cost controls) and has led high-severity incident response including CloudTrail forensics and infrastructure recovery after a compromised-keys crypto-mining attack.”

“Engineering/product leader who builds business-aligned technology roadmaps and scales pod-based orgs with strong delivery discipline (OKRs, CI/CD, QA automation). Led a SaaS supply-chain application adopted by Fortune 100 customers, citing ~$4M MRR and ~87% gross profit, and has hands-on experience standardizing LLM + cloud/MLOps architectures with security/compliance guardrails. Also created the PISEK methodology and used it to run distributed innovation sprints (e.g., an AI ETA predictor moved from pilot to production).”

“Startup operator with 8 years of experience who helped grow the business from limited initial capital into a much larger ARR. Somewhat familiar with the VC/accelerator landscape and strongly motivated to pursue entrepreneurship, with a clear framework for evaluating new venture ideas.”

“Platform/infra engineer with deep Kubernetes (EKS) and VMware vSphere experience who has led a monolith-to-microservices transition for a credit lending decision platform. Built GitOps-driven Terraform delivery with strong governance, and used LaunchDarkly-based progressive rollouts plus Datadog observability to safely ship multiple times per day (reported ~6x throughput and 1/3 the bugfix tickets vs legacy). Also operates hybrid on-prem/AWS networking (firewall + Transit Gateway, BGP) and has handled high-stakes datacenter migrations (100TB Storage vMotion) under Sev1 conditions.”

Medi Val

Screened

Executive technology leader specializing in AI, digital strategy, and business transformation

Toronto, Canada25y exp

“Candidate reports being highly familiar with the venture capital and accelerator landscape, citing past experience working with VC-related environments at WINR Games and BioSymetrics. The interview ended early when the candidate withdrew their application, so detail is limited.”

“Gameplay engineer with hands-on ownership of a computer-vision body-tracking system that powered Dance Break, a full-body dance game shipped across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android and used at large live events like EDC Las Vegas and Alibaba CoCreate. Particularly strong in performance-sensitive Unity systems, cross-platform optimization, and multiplayer architecture decisions, with experience spanning mobile, VR, and deterministic networking.”

“Serial entrepreneur and operator with experience financing and scaling startups using bank debt, PE debt, and self-funding, including a real estate asset management company grown through creative debt/equity structures. Former VP Engineering & Online Operations at a colo/cloud provider acquired by Zayo; built a global solutions engineering org in 30 days that contributed 18% of company growth and scaled quarterly revenue from ~$300K to ~$1.25M.”

Daniel Dickson

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in SaaS, AI/LLM systems, and startup growth

Portland, OR16y exp

“Experienced CTO with a track record of taking three companies to successful exits, including one merger with eBay. Has worked extensively across venture capital, startup studio, and accelerator environments, with core responsibility for leading software development and infrastructure in high-growth settings.”

Mac Tichner

Screened

Principal Software Engineer specializing in full-stack platforms and AI integration

Miami, FL14y exp

“Serial entrepreneur and software engineer currently ideating a B2B vertical AI SaaS company with seed funding secured, using a custom-built AI agent to generate and vet startup ideas. Previously sold a software product (AskDiagnostic) into physician offices and spun an observed workflow gap into an in-house compounding solution, including a <3-minute dispensing process and supporting software for inventory, compliance, labeling, reorders, billing, and reporting.”

Rocky Vienna

Screened

Executive Technology & Operations Leader (CIO/CTO/COO) specializing in PE value creation

10y exp

“Operations transformation leader with private-equity due diligence experience who rebuilt KIO Networks’ operating model using ITIL/COBIT/ISO 27001, stood up a PMO, and standardized tooling across countries—helping shift the business from co-location to managed services/cloud and improving EBITDA from -7% to +4% in 18 months. Also serves as a board member/mentor at EvoNexus and UCSD Rady, coaching founders on ICP, GTM, pricing, and investor readiness.”