Vetted Co-Founders in California

Emmanuel Ngalima

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Mid-Level Software Engineer specializing in geospatial AI and cloud security automation

San Ramon, CA5y exp

“Cloud engineer and cloud OS SME (Chevron) who productionized large-scale security remediation—using Tanium and Ansible to address CIS benchmark noncompliance across 5,000+ servers with robust logging and RCA handoffs. Also drives adoption of a geospatial AI refinery inspection product by consolidating siloed imagery into an enterprise geospatial database, and presents internally on agentic/LLM tooling (LangChain/LangGraph, LangSmith observability).”

Ravi Gairola

Screened

Executive engineering leader specializing in AI platforms and cloud infrastructure

San Francisco, CA15y exp

“Engineering leader and hands-on architect with experience managing three teams spanning product, internal tooling, and ML, while also building AI chat and digital twin systems. Particularly notable for a patented memory architecture used to impersonate users in meetings/chat, plus prior delivery of a consumer digital payments system for Razer under tight deadlines and heavy tech debt.”

“Early-stage/first sales hire profile with strong outbound motion and process-building experience. Self-sourced and closed a $2.8M Yahoo deal (8-month cycle) using a shared mutual plan to manage stakeholders and timelines, and has recent mid-market ACV wins selling Mapistry to environmental compliance managers by enabling champions to secure internal budget. Has also implemented MEDDICC and built foundational GTM assets (e.g., Quantcast’s first sales deck used in $2B+ of closed business).”

Ramtin Kazemi

Screened

Junior Full-Stack Software Engineer specializing in Django, AWS, and AI/ML

San Diego, California1y exp

“Full-stack engineer who built and owned an AI-powered personal statement editor in Next.js (App Router + TypeScript), including dynamic routing, server-side data fetching, and typed API route handlers. Post-launch, they handled production monitoring/debugging and shipped reliability/performance upgrades (rate limiting, retries, rollback, DB indexing), and report a 40% latency reduction using Suspense/streaming and React concurrency patterns. Also implemented a durable Temporal-orchestrated AI document workflow with robust retry/idempotency strategies.”

Eugene Nelepko

Screened

Executive growth leader specializing in AI-powered SaaS, marketplaces, and e-commerce

San Francisco, CA13y exp

“Growth leader with strong zero-to-one and systems-building experience across e-commerce and retail media. Most notably, they proposed and launched a new retail media division from scratch, presold demand before product build, and scaled it to $1.5M ARR with 85% margin, while also building data-driven lifecycle and acquisition systems that materially improved activation and CAC efficiency.”

“Engineering Manager/player-coach leading Data Infrastructure, ML/DS, and AI Engineering pods who recently shipped multiple production agentic GenAI features. Built privacy-preserving LLM workflows (PII redaction via Microsoft Presidio) and drove an AI expense-approval agent from ambiguous ask to GA, cutting approval time from ~2.5 days to <4 hours with >85% accuracy. Also owned a major LLM cost overrun incident and implemented cost observability plus circuit breakers to prevent runaway agent loops.”

“Venture investing/sourcing professional who runs a high-volume, systematized founder outreach motion across warm intros, accelerators, social outbound, and databases (PitchBook/Crunchbase), targeting ~50 personalized founder touchpoints weekly. Uses AI workflows to build targeted lists and monitor company updates, and has converted highly contextual outbound into qualified diligence opportunities (e.g., industrial automation/frontline productivity). Values long-term founder relationships pre-raise through consistent value-add and is motivated by growth toward a partner track.”

Teage Johnson

Screened

Junior Full-Stack Engineer specializing in FinTech and machine learning

California, USA3y exp

“Software engineer at early-stage startup Cari with hands-on experience shipping AI-enabled production workflows, including an LLM chatbot for a micro-transit platform and an automated image-processing pipeline integrated with Claude. Stands out for combining practical agent reliability patterns—schema validation, fallbacks, caching, and idempotency—with strong ML evaluation instincts and experience cleaning messy operational invoice data.”

Corbin Ward

Screened

Junior Product Manager / APM specializing in data tools, CMS platforms, and AI-enabled products

San Jose, CA1y exp

“Data Software Tools Analyst at Q.ai through rapid growth and a $2B Apple acquisition who led an internal CMS for participant/PII workflows using Next.js (App Router) + FastAPI/Postgres with strong security controls (JWT + Postgres RLS). Also drove a major frontend architecture shift toward React Server Components, reporting ~4x faster page loads, and has experience building durable realtime collaboration systems with Supabase/SvelteKit and server-centric state management.”

Colleen Gray

Screened

Executive healthcare and medtech CEO specializing in capital raising and medical device commercialization

San Francisco, CA18y exp

“Registered investment banker at US Capital Global with roughly 20 years of fundraising experience across startups and growth companies. He has served as both operator and founder/C-suite leader, raising more than $275M+ for ventures including StorageWay and $27M for medtech startup TracPatch Health, with particular depth in healthcare, investor strategy, diligence, and board-level execution.”

Stephan Thomas

Screened

Executive growth strategist specializing in technology, M&A, and digital manufacturing

San Francisco, CA25y exp

“Repeat founder who has co-founded two companies and sold the most recent one three years ago. Currently exploring a fintech-style debt management tool for SMBs focused on covenant monitoring, reporting, and forecasting, and is still in customer discovery with a mock demo and landing page. Brings a thoughtful, customer-first approach to evaluating startup ideas and a solid understanding of how venture studios support companies from 0 to 1.”

“Sourcing-focused early-stage VC operator who stays embedded in high-signal founder ecosystems (YC/Techstars-style accelerators, state programs, investor Slack/angel networks) and runs a curated community of ~45 VCs to drive consistent deal flow. Uses a structured, metrics-driven outbound and screening process (25 reachouts/week; 5–8 calls) plus Airtable-based pipeline management and n8n follow-up automation; has advanced sourced deals (e.g., rare earth materials, quantum/grid optimization, plasma fuel for fusion) into pitch sessions and late-stage diligence.”