Vetted Co-Founders

Jeff Zhou

Screened

Senior strategy and operations leader specializing in product, M&A, and growth strategy

New York, NY10y exp

“Strategy and corporate development leader with a rare mix of big-company M&A experience at Indeed, private equity training, and hands-on founder experience. They have advised leadership on inorganic growth in HR tech, helped take a job seeker product from market research to launch and monetization, and built a mentor-mentee marketplace for international students in New York.”

“Built ZenDraft and brings an operator's lens to founder sourcing and evaluation. Demonstrated ability to run structured outbound, convert cold outreach into product-shaping conversations and pilot introductions, and manage an early-stage investment-style pipeline with clear decision frameworks.”

Nilesh Dixit

Screened

Executive AI engineering leader specializing in agentic AI and enterprise platforms

San Francisco, CA24y exp

“Bay Area engineering leader and startup co-founder with a rare mix of deep hands-on architecture experience, large-scale people leadership, and cross-functional product ownership. He helped launch GE Digital's industrial IoT efforts, holds multiple patents in the space, has scaled teams to 60-70 people, and has led both enterprise platform modernization and AI startup product development.”

Polat Akbiyik

Screened

Mid-level Software Engineer specializing in FinTech and trading systems

Remote4y exp

“Full-stack builder with strong product and AI systems ownership, spanning data infrastructure, React/TypeScript apps, and LLM-powered agents. Particularly notable for building a crypto analytics MVP with catalog-driven ETL, config-based charting, and AI-generated dashboards, plus an options-strategy agent and an ops automation tool that cut a 10-minute workflow down to 10 seconds.”

“Product/design leader in financial services who has driven measurable UX impact at Truist, including moving digital banking visual appeal from 9th to 3rd in JD Power through research-led refinement rather than a costly full redesign. Brings hands-on AI product experience with personalized banking insights, strong stakeholder leadership across complex enterprise environments, and a personal commitment to human-centered AI shaped by tutoring experience and a background overcoming poverty through education.”

Thomas Majchrowski

Screened

Executive Technology Leader (CTO) specializing in SaaS, AI platforms, and M&A integration

Irvine, CA22y exp

“Entrepreneurial builder who created a SaaS system for insurance sales and developed in-house sales/marketing platforms, prioritizing a robust backend that drove over $500k in immediate sales before expanding features. Emphasizes lean, high-impact execution with strong focus on optimization, barrier management, and contingency planning.”

Brian Porter

Screened

Executive sports operations leader specializing in baseball and revenue partnerships

Boston, MA26y exp

“Former White Sox player development executive and Commissioner's Office scout with 14 years across MLB-facing roles, including draft evaluation, contract negotiation, and player advising. Now an independent advisor guiding amateur players and families through recruiting, draft preparation, and pro-ball decisions, with a network that has helped create offers, workouts, and development opportunities.”

“Private equity/growth investor with sourcing-heavy experience across software, currently at PSG within a $30B AUM platform after originating 1200+ net new companies at Akmazo Capital. Stands out for combining high-volume outbound founder sourcing with rigorous market research and relationship-building that has led to proprietary SaaS deals and active investment diligence.”

Jonathan Cook

Screened

Executive product leader specializing in AI-native human-in-the-loop platforms

New York, NY17y exp

“Product leader with experience driving major platform builds and even company pivots, including transforming Kinetic from a wearables-focused insurtech into an AI-enabled workers' comp claims platform. Combines deep customer discovery, low-tech MVP experimentation, and strong cross-functional judgment; also helped shape smartwatch app platform strategy at Fitbit and has a clear philosophy of AI as a human decision-support tool rather than a replacement.”

“Co-founded and led the business side of Plasma Nutrition for a decade, commercializing atmospheric-plasma technology to improve protein efficacy/absorption. Bootstrapped for 5 years before raising venture funding, leveraged FoodX accelerator validation, and navigated a major go-to-market pivot (B2C to B2B). Drove growth by renegotiating out of an exclusive manufacturing arrangement and scaling to roughly six brand partners within a year.”

“Full-stack engineer and KICKOFFUSA cofounder who built production payment/registration and live tournament experiences under real matchday load (200+ concurrent users), including Stripe webhooks with idempotency and UX improvements that cut checkout abandonment ~15%. Also owned an end-to-end research hub at a GTSCL internship—designed a normalized Postgres schema and full-text search (tsvector/GIN) delivering sub-100ms queries for 300+ researchers.”

Sam McKenzie

Screened

Mid-level Business Operations & FP&A professional specializing in RevOps automation and GTM strategy

Remote7y exp

“At BuildZoom, led cross-functional alignment to launch a new product (Data Explorer) and grew it from $0 to $1.3M ARR in 12 months. Leverages analytics and BI tooling (HubSpot, Looker, Tableau, Sisense) to build executive dashboards and drive strategic decisions, including redesigning sales incentives to emphasize recurring revenue.”

Janice Yeung

Screened

Mid-level Marketing Professional specializing in cross-channel brand and growth campaigns

Toronto, Canada5y exp

“Growth and partnerships marketer with experience spanning Coca-Cola brand/creator collaborations and CMC Markets performance acquisition. Has sourced and closed a Hong Kong Disneyland partnership built around a digital game activation, and runs data-driven Google Ads GTM and funnel experiments (Search/YouTube/Demand Gen, retargeting, landing page CRO) focused on lowering CPA and increasing qualified leads.”

Chris Przybyszewski

Screened

Executive entrepreneur specializing in biotech, medtech, and fundraising

“Serial entrepreneur who has founded five companies, achieved one acquisition with another pending, and raised $150M across biotech, medtech, and mobile tech ventures. Brings rare end-to-end startup formation experience spanning EIR and accelerator mentorship, board and executive leadership, and sophisticated capital strategy across both dilutive and nondilutive funding.”