Vetted Founders in the Raleigh-Durham

“Operator-investor with three distinct chapters in venture capital, product management, and entrepreneurship. They evaluated 3,000+ companies in VC, then led global compliance product work at Binance across 90+ integrations and 30+ markets, while also building Kidogi shop into a real business with ~400% revenue growth and AI-enabled workflow automation.”

“Engineer with hands-on experience shipping production Python integrations and designing for reliability from day one, including idempotency, retries, dead-letter handling, contract checks, and full observability. Also brings web automation experience with Puppeteer and has implemented high-availability failover using load balancer liveness checks, backup environments, and cold standby architecture.”

Cole Bonawitz

Screened

Junior founder and product builder specializing in e-commerce, hardware, and software

Durham, NC5y exp

“Early-stage startup operator and founder who combines sales, GTM, and technical execution. Built a custom CRM for Swoop Tutors to send personalized outbound from Duke email accounts and track performance, helping generate traction that later contributed to a six-figure ARR client; also building Wind, a usage-based billing startup for small AI companies.”

Brandon McCarty

Screened

Executive startup founder specializing in SaaS, FinTech, and operations

Raleigh, NC15y exp

“Founder/product leader who built CureMint, an industry-first procure-to-pay platform for dental groups, combining e-commerce UX, spend controls, AP workflows, and AI-driven catalog normalization. He appears strongest in zero-to-one product leadership, domain-driven product strategy, and strategic pivots—ultimately evolving the company toward fintech/payments and helping support its Series A story.”