Vetted Founders

“Marketing/partnerships professional with hands-on creator experience as a blogger and micro-influencer, bringing a creator-side lens to brand deals and trust-first sponsorships. Has led partner-led ABM GTM and acquisition loops (webinars + email nurtures) targeting Canadian SMB cloud/cybersecurity upgrades, driving the highest MQL pipeline of the year at lower cost than paid and scaling the motion across partners.”

“Cloud/ML engineer with production deployment experience on Azure (Dockerized models, managed APIs, data pipelines) who has repeatedly stabilized unreliable systems—e.g., taking an API-driven analytics pipeline from ~60% to 98% reliability and an Azure ML service from ~80% to 97% by addressing rate limits, container memory, and gateway timeouts. Also built an explainable contract-risk model for entertainment bookings (Transformers + SHAP) and integrated it into a legacy booking system via a Flask REST API, plus prior IoT work at Nissan processing CAN bus sensor streams for diagnostics/anomaly insights.”

“Former CEO of GravyWork with hands-on experience building an org-wide strategic plan and modernization roadmap for a growing company. Uses Michael Gerber’s innovation/orchestration/quantification framework and structured as-is/gap/to-be analysis to drive cost reduction, automation/outsourcing decisions, and leadership alignment through change.”

“Chief of Staff at Molecular Affinities and former Investor Relations & Operations manager at JCAM Investments, with hands-on experience supporting capital raising while simultaneously tightening operations (website, investor onboarding, back office). Strong operator who implements and drives adoption of systems like HubSpot, Asana, and Slack to improve executive productivity and team accountability.”

“Exited Founder-CEO with deep-tech experience who raised capital and built a venture around making end-to-end encryption with cloud-level performance and data sovereignty feasible. Demonstrated first-principles technical rigor (network/TCP analysis) to prove scientific feasibility, then progressed from proof of concept to prototype and eventual exit, with a strong bias toward ultra-lean, customer-paid MVPs.”

“Backend engineer who has built end-to-end data and platform systems across domains: a Scala/Java media data warehouse with a custom query language and Elasticsearch search, plus production security patterns (RBAC, RLS, audit trails) including a telehealth platform. Also demonstrated strong operational rigor by using feature-flagged side-by-side migrations and by catching ecommerce checkout edge cases that were dropping revenue.”

“Former college basketball coach/player and college administrator who owns and runs an AAU/youth basketball organization in Western NY, impacting 200+ kids and families over ~20 years. Combines hands-on scouting and officiating at exposure events with a current career in sports media/advertising sales, producing content tied to major events (Final Four, NBA, Olympics, NFL).”

“Beauty category/program manager with experience running end-to-end brand campaigns across subscription/assortment and eCommerce, including line planning, inventory pacing, and demand generation. Has negotiated directly with a global beauty conglomerate using pricing tests and scale-based proposals, sustaining the partnership through regular reporting/insights and helping drive onboarding of additional brands.”

“Serial founder/engineer who has raised capital for two prior startups and is now building a mental awareness venture. Drove rapid early traction for Fashom after an organic YouTube unboxing sparked demand, then scaled using influencer-led growth with no paid ads for ~2 years, achieving ~150% YoY growth and staying profitable through COVID.”

“Founder who built and operated a marketing agency (Six Degrees) end-to-end, setting up legal/infrastructure foundations and implementing SOPs, KPIs, and repeatable operating rhythms. Emphasizes operational excellence, predictable delivery, and prioritization based on customer impact, revenue risk, and compliance/safety.”

“LLM/agent builder who shipped a live consumer AI-agent app (kalpa.chat) that visualizes complex reasoning as interactive graphs and abstracts multi-provider model usage via a unified wallet. Professionally has applied LangChain/LangGraph to IVR parsing and to scaling a football video-generation pipeline at DAZN, including shipping a VAR-specific retrieval/order fix via SQL after iterating with a non-technical PM.”

“Audio/music editor working across longform narrative video and theatrical production, focused on shaping emotional beats through precise timing (delayed builds/drops, extended transitions) and cohesive mixing. Uses Audacity and Ableton/DAWs with EQ, compression, automation, crossfades, and noise reduction, and works closely with editor/producer direction to iterate quickly (typical ~1 week turnaround).”

“Built ReflectlyAI, an AI-powered interview coach, implementing a low-latency Python/Flask backend with modular LLM/Whisper services, retries/fallbacks, caching/batching, and async/background processing. Demonstrates strong PostgreSQL/SQLAlchemy performance tuning (EXPLAIN ANALYZE, composite indexes, selectinload) and multi-tenant isolation patterns (tenant-scoped schemas, tenant_id middleware), reporting ~50% response-time reduction.”

“Pharma marketing and go-to-market professional with ~8 years building launch strategies, including experience on the Lovenox marketing team during a major hospital-to-outpatient injectable launch. Demonstrates strong reimbursement expertise (J-code strategy) and hands-on field research with pharmacists across states to enable outpatient reimbursement adoption.”

“Operator-turned-CEO coach who founded and scaled a laundry services business from a $500 start into an international, multi-location chain. Led high-stakes retail merger integration and rapid store expansion at Advance Auto Parts (600→1,200 stores in ~9 months; 2,500+ additional openings over 5 years) and developed an OGSI operations framework adopted by dozens of companies.”

“Growth and partnerships operator with 10+ years in digital marketing across Web3, gaming/creator ecosystems, and B2B SaaS. Has executed exchange listings (KuCoin/Bybit/MEXC) and community-led campaigns (AMAs, guild partnerships), plus international GTM (Nigeria) that drove ~$100k traded volume in month one and rapid social growth to 100k X followers.”

“Talent/Recruiting Operations leader who ran a 450–600 person multi-region org (USA/MX/Colombia) with end-to-end ownership of SLAs, capacity planning, funnel metrics, ATS/CRM, compliance, bench, and renewals. Known for high-impact operational redesigns—revamped sales comp to lift EBIT and built a CX function that improved renewals by 10% in 12 months (~$7M). Also drove a Slack-first AI workflow strategy that cut complex RFP turnaround from weeks to minutes.”