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).”

Bibhash Biswas

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive technology leader specializing in AI/ML, SaaS, and cloud architecture

Los Angeles, CA25y exp

“Hands-on CTO and player-coach engineering leader from MindShow who led a 10-person team, transformed a services business into a licensable product sold to Fortune 500 customers, and stayed deep in architecture, AI, and UI work. Particularly notable for combining microservices/system design leadership with practical AI product delivery in speech and media workflows, including a phoneme-generation system the candidate says achieved 99.9%+ accuracy.”

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.”

Tarishi Doshi

Screened

Mid-level brand and growth consultant specializing in partnerships and consumer marketing

California, USA5y exp

“CRM and lifecycle marketer who grew from campaign analysis into full-stack ownership, building HubSpot automation, segmentation, reporting, and cross-channel programs in fast-moving brands. Has experience spanning hospitality, events, and luxury travel, including analyzing 5,000+ campaigns in Tableau and leading a multi-location activation that generated 130k+ organic social views.”

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.”

“Product leader with 20 years of experience across startups and agencies, including leading the end-to-end rebuild of Filmik, an AI-enabled workflow platform for film and television production teams. Stands out for combining deep UX simplification instincts with human-centered AI thinking, using automation to reduce friction while preserving trust, control, and collaboration. Has also built and mentored globally distributed product, design, engineering, and delivery teams across multiple regions.”

“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.”