Vetted Founders

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).”

“Performance marketer specializing in high-spend search and multi-platform paid media (Google Ads, Bing, Meta, TikTok), with a standout case doubling WinkBeds monthly revenue from $1M to $2M while materially improving ROAS on both Google and Bing. Strong in rigorous experimentation (Google Ads Experiments), campaign consolidation to eliminate overlap, and tracking/brand protection—successfully identifying and stopping affiliate ad hijacking that caused a conversion drop.”

“Creative director/designer spanning high-polish marketing brand work and enterprise innovation: built a full podcast brand ecosystem and a cinematic historical visualization using Google Veo 3. Also led an AR/VR-assisted remote troubleshooting initiative at TriMas (HoloLens-style workflows), delivering a 40% MTTR reduction and cutting expert travel by 50%+ while standardizing reusable interaction components for global teams.”

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.”

“Seattle startup veteran with a decade of early-stage 0-1 engineering experience who has worked alongside founders through seed to Series A raises and participated in technical due diligence. Currently building and shipping "Flicker," an iOS app on the App Store that uses on-device LLMs and OpenAI API integration to automate business idea discovery, with a strong hands-on approach to user feedback and product validation.”

“Former Head of Growth & Strategy at a digital identity company (pre-MBA in Boston) who ran multiple cross-functional initiatives across sales, product, and finance. Delivered measurable outcomes including raising sales conversion from 70% to 83% in 30 days, achieving 17% profitability via a new pricing model, and launching a new onboarding platform GTM on time.”

“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.”

“Startup-oriented product/technology leader targeting CTO roles, with experience evaluating and scoping high-impact product expansions. At Crelate, helped assess and shape a contract timekeeping/invoicing initiative that expanded TAM by hundreds of millions and increased ACV 2-3x, contributing to successful market traction and the company’s path to Series C.”

“Performance marketing leader with experience managing a national paid media program at MyEyeDr. averaging $2.2M/month across digital and offline channels for 950+ locations. Stands out for combining rigorous incrementality testing, media mix modeling, and creative experimentation to drive 81% booking growth over two years while lowering CAC by 26%.”

“Game designer on Madden NFL (incl. Madden NFL 26) who contributed to Superstar Showdown mode rules and weekly Game Day Beats objectives, focusing on playtest-driven tuning to keep challenges fun and achievable. Also owned the Superstar storefront experience, coordinating with art/design under tight timelines and adapting live-service merchandising based on what players responded to.”

“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.”

Kurt Balingit

Screened

Senior Digital Marketing Specialist specializing in demand generation and SEO/SEM

7y exp

“Performance marketer with hands-on ownership of high-spend acquisition programs, including managing ~50K/month at Backblaze across Google Ads and paid social while optimizing for trial-to-paid conversion. Built Protective's employee benefits paid media from scratch into a full-funnel LinkedIn + Google program, scaling spend ~300% YoY and improving lead quality through tighter targeting and keyword refinement.”

“Senior technology leader and hands-on builder spanning enterprise architecture and product/engineering leadership across healthcare and entertainment. Has led high-impact cloud and security architecture decisions (including establishing a private cloud to address scalability/security at massive scale) and scaled orgs 300% using pod-based team structures. Currently building an AI-supported hydroponics/vertical farming IoT framework (ESP32 + Azure) and a musician collaboration platform (React + Neo4j + AWS).”

“Recruiting leader who managed a team of 4 and stays hands-on with executive search and analytics. Partnered closely with a CRO to run a quality-of-hire analysis for sales hires and used the findings to shift hiring toward consultative profiles; also implemented candidate surveys to shorten overly long interview processes and improve candidate experience.”

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.”

“Frontend engineer focused on marketing and analytics products, including a real-time multi-touch attribution dashboard. Uses Next.js (SSR/ISR) with React/TypeScript and Tailwind, and emphasizes quality at scale via automated testing, CI/CD (GitHub Actions), feature-flagged staged rollouts, and Mixpanel-driven iteration. Experienced modern state management patterns (React Query + Zustand) and performance tuning (code-splitting, dynamic imports, lazy loading).”

“Built and deployed a compliance-sensitive LLM pipeline that extracts rebate logic from hospital–supplier medical contracts, using multi-layer redaction (regex/NER/dictionary), schema-validated structured outputs, and secure placeholder reinsertion. Hosted models on Amazon Bedrock to avoid retraining on sensitive data and improved both accuracy and cost by splitting the workflow into a lightweight section classifier plus a fine-tuned extraction model, orchestrated with LangChain and evaluated via layered, test-driven agent assessments.”

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.”