Vetted Founders in California

Dan Gervais

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive technology leader specializing in big data, AI/ML, and SaaS platforms

Escondido, CA28y exp

“Hands-on IT/engineering executive who has led high-impact architecture changes and compliance-driven data systems. Notably built an internally developed columnar database at Troparé (with dual-support UI for legacy/new DBs) and shipped an MVP in 3–4 months with dramatic performance improvements, and previously delivered PCI/opt-out compliant deletion workflows while addressing DB performance and migrations.”

“Startup builder (MagicSeven) who designed and implemented a browser-based, agentic video editor end-to-end, including an AWS event-driven multimodal LLM “indexing” pipeline and an orchestration LLM agent for searching and manipulating footage. Demonstrates deep video file/codec knowledge plus practical production hardening of LLM workflows (format validation, plan/execute, S3-based state for debuggability).”

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).”

Carlos Arambula

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Principal & Senior Brand/Marketing Leader specializing in go-to-market, multicultural and digital growth

Manhattan Beach, CA37y exp

“Brand and growth marketer with experience spanning global CPG and corporate brands through to healthcare/pharma and financial services. Known for consumer-insight-led repositioning and measurable, digital-first acquisition (notably CTV), plus executing U.S. market entry and scaling distribution into major retailers and pharmacies within months.”

“Enterprise/technical seller with ~2 decades of complex sales experience, focused on high-ACV AI/robotics-style deals. Self-sourced and closed a robotics opportunity into a $500K paid pilot that expanded to $1M, coordinating NDAs and multi-party integrations across NVIDIA GPU/CUDA, camera, and VMS stakeholders. Also founded a startup and built early pipeline from scratch, leading a small sales team to close initial deals in a pre-revenue MVP stage.”

“Customer Success leader with deep ad tech expertise who owned enterprise accounts end-to-end, including Bank of America, driving ad fraud down from ~8–10% to <1% in ~3 months and resolving spikes through data-driven investigations. Experienced partnering cross-functionally as a PM to build analytics dashboards and using user stories to align Product/Engineering/Sales and influence roadmap priorities; also supports land-and-expand via paid benchmarking/industry data upsells.”

Jax Diagana

Screened

Senior AI Engineer specializing in forward-deployed voice agents and incident-response automation

San Francisco, CA7y exp

“FDE at Bland.ai and founder of Fi (incident-response agent) who routinely takes LLM/agentic concepts from prototype to production. Has hands-on experience reverse-engineering undocumented systems to deliver integrations, building LLM testbeds for voice-agent reliability, and rapidly shipping RAG/semantic search solutions (e.g., Confluence runbooks) after deep customer discovery with DevOps/SRE teams.”

“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.”

“Merchandising and buying leader with experience at Rue Gilt, Zappos, and Fisker, owning end-to-end category strategy, OTB, and vendor negotiations across multi-channel e-commerce. Known for structuring high-impact vendor deals (tiered cost breaks, exclusivity, vendor-funded markdowns) and using SKU-level analytics to drive outsized results, including 15% sales growth/8% margin improvement on a $55M category and 80% YoY profit growth from partnership agreements.”

“LLM/agent builder who has shipped production AI systems in the wellness space, including an LLM-powered food tracking product used by 5000+ users and a voice/call-routing onboarding workflow using LangGraph/LangChain with LiveKit and Twilio. Strong focus on practical reliability work: latency reduction, retrieval/embedding tuning, and CI-driven evaluation with simulations and metrics.”

“Product designer/hardware prototyper building Saccade (VR headset attachment for Apple Vision Pro) to enable earlier, lower-cost Alzheimer's detection via eye-tracking and on-device CV/ML; designed a custom biocompatible snap-on light-shield replacement with integrated cameras/PCB after Apple camera-data restrictions. Also has biomedical manufacturing experience (major fixture-driven throughput gains) and leads a 160-member Assistive Technology Club sponsored by Apple and Google.”

Nehemiah Dias

Screened

Senior Frontend Engineer specializing in design systems and real-time SaaS platforms

San Francisco, CA11y exp

“Full-stack product builder who has repeatedly taken end-to-end ownership in startup environments, including building PromoFlow solo and architecting the entire software backbone for Hard Drive. Particularly strong at turning ambiguous product needs into scalable systems, from real-time Firebase apps to shared component libraries and redesigned Postgres architectures, while also bridging non-technical founders, design, and engineering.”