Vetted Co-Founders

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).”

“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.”

“Solo-built and launched an AI logo generator SaaS in ~2 months using React/Next.js/TypeScript with managed auth and payments, deploying via Vercel/GitHub CI/CD. Also has hands-on AWS production experience running containerized services with Terraform-managed multi-environment infrastructure and strong reliability patterns for integrations/pipelines.”

“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.”

Upasana Pandey

Screened

Senior Product Designer specializing in enterprise, AI-driven, data-heavy products

Dallas, TX6y exp

“Product/UX designer who has led end-to-end design systems for high-impact, multinational products—most notably a live African Union policy tracking platform used by 11 countries. Experienced translating complex, regulated workflows into intuitive experiences (including a gamified pediatric vaccination journey) and collaborating closely with engineers using component-based design systems and Agile delivery.”

Samantha Pinheiro

Screened

Mid-level Growth & Business Development Operator in Financial Services and Defense Tech

Remote3y exp

“Sales/business development operator who has repeatedly built outbound motions from scratch—most recently launching a B2B recruiting GTM at Pinnacle Private Credit, generating 50+ relationships, a $50K+ pipeline in 5 weeks, and closing 7 enterprise agreements with C-suite financial services stakeholders. Also co-founded a defense tech startup (multi-sensor aerial threat detection), led investor outreach to 100+ investors, and applies AI/ML both for outreach personalization (ChatGPT/Claude) and product work (sensor fusion/threat detection).”

“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.”