Vetted Founders

Alexandra Esparza

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive Investment Banking & Capital Markets Leader specializing in TMT and Digital Health

Brooklyn, NY15y exp

“Private-capital-focused investment banker (former sports/health-tech banker) building a two-sided wellness coaching marketplace plus SaaS platform to help coaches run their businesses and consumers discover/vet/book non-regulated wellness modalities. Has an MVP, landing page, and waitlist, and is running a data-driven traction plan (ads, surveys, alpha testing, Discord/Reddit) before pursuing fundraising channels.”

“People operations and talent acquisition leader who was handpicked to launch the first Google Operations Center in the U.S., building the entire hiring and people-program infrastructure from the ground up (including selecting/configuring Greenhouse). Experienced scaling in new markets using deep talent intelligence and transferable-skill frameworks, and currently advises founders as a board member for a talent acquisition startup with a data-and-benchmarks-driven operating cadence.”

Paul Boehms

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive COO/CFO specializing in operational excellence, finance transformation, and M&A integration

Grand Rapids and Detroit, MI25y exp

“COO/operator with 12 years in law firm environments who founded an HR consulting startup under Clark Hill PLC, building the full go-to-market, pricing, and standardized service delivery playbooks (including a payroll-percentage fractional HR retainer model). Lean Six Sigma Black Belt with proven results in both manufacturing (raising rooftop AC output from 20 to 50 units/week) and professional services (cut ~1 week from invoicing to improve cash flow). Also runs financial operations for a fast-growing nonprofit sports club (600+ participants).”

“Engineering leader who drove Lightroom Mobile’s roadmap at Adobe by enforcing reuse of Photoshop imaging tech to deliver RAW, non-destructive mobile editing with full Creative Cloud compatibility. In startup environments, has repeatedly scaled and professionalized engineering orgs (career ladders, evaluation systems, delivery process) and led high-stakes cloud/platform transformations—migrating off Heroku and consolidating fragmented AWS/GCP usage into a single GCP platform—improving reliability, deploy speed, and cutting cloud costs by 20%+.”

“Entrepreneur building an AI-driven small molecule biotech startup who has already raised $5M from major venture capital investors. Brings 3 years of fundraising experience and a thoughtful approach to aligning investors with different risk profiles across financing stages, paired with strong conviction around founding high-risk, high-upside companies.”

“Serial entrepreneur with multiple startups and demonstrated VC fundraising experience, including raising $125K for a current business plan and building investor relationships across several VC firms. Driven by tackling difficult problems and assessing opportunities through a lens of solution creativity and team execution, while prioritizing sustainable quality of life.”

“Engineering leader who built and scaled a distributed team (Serbia + US) to deliver an internal multi-tenant Kubernetes-based PaaS, moving a large org from manual ops-driven deployments to automated CI/CD with >99.97% uptime and 100% service adoption. Known for culture change (blameless post-mortems, clear intake via ticketing) and security-first platform practices (tenant isolation, Falco) supporting SOC2 compliance; also operates at exec level with stakeholder communication and fundraising.”

Nishant Pathak

Screened

Executive Engineering Leader specializing in cloud-native platforms and security

14y exp

“Former CTO of EzCred, a fintech embedded finance/digital lending infrastructure startup that built an API-first underwriting and servicing platform using alternative data (e.g., GST and bank statements) to cut loan decisions from days to minutes. Helped raise $1M in seed funding, built the engineering org and compliance-ready cloud architecture, and ran partner pilots before the company shut down during COVID-driven lending market contraction.”

“Four-time founder with hands-on experience inside angel- and venture-backed executive teams, plus accelerator mentorship experience. Brings a practical, customer-validation-driven approach to company building, with strong insight into early-stage team dynamics and investor ecosystems.”

“ML/NLP practitioner and technical founder who built an AUP risk-scoring model at Bill.com using TF-IDF + SVD features with XGBoost, and previously created automated data-quality guardrails for a Global Equity Risk stacked ML model at Thomson Reuters. Recently built a RAG-based chatbot for PaymentJock’s Home Affordability Probability product using embeddings and a local vector database (FAISS/Chroma), improving answer quality through chunking rather than expensive fine-tuning.”

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.”

“Former corporate retail leader (25 years) who recently launched a boutique consultancy and has already advised ~12 early-stage founders. Specializes in installing disciplined but lightweight operating systems across merchandising, inventory planning, and wholesale readiness—driving outcomes like +53% YTD growth for a D2C/wholesale apparel brand and rebuilding a NYC candy brand’s margin structure ahead of major wholesaler launches in 2026.”

“Former investment banker who built an AI hiring tech platform to automate early-stage undergraduate screening for investment banks, validated via discovery calls with heads of HR and tailored workflows to bank-specific recruiting needs. Strong 0-to-1 operator with a disciplined approach to problem selection, moat analysis, and lean go-to-market execution.”

Paul Baker

Screened

Director-level Video & Creative Producer specializing in branded storytelling and studio operations

Remote, CA15y exp

“Senior video editor/motion-focused post-production leader with 18+ years in Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, including Creative Cloud 2025 AI tools and Dynamic Link workflows. Managed the Google Analytics YouTube channel for hundreds of videos over 6 years at Google, and has delivered brand-critical work for major enterprises (Google, Visa, Capital One, ServiceNow), including tight-turn executive-facing motion pieces.”

hemant jha

Screened

Executive Design & Innovation Leader specializing in product, strategy, and sustainable systems

Chicago, Illinois25y exp

“Product/system designer focused on ultra-clean, modular, customizable work/organization environments (e.g., making stations for studios and fabrication spaces). Emphasizes rules-based interaction models, restrained structural visual language, and hands-on field research/prototyping to embed industrial constraints (tolerances, load paths, safety) into intuitive, training-free user experiences.”