Vetted Founders

“Fractional ops/HR leader with 15 years of experience supporting ~40 startups, building internal operations and people infrastructure from scratch (HRIS, recruiting funnels, career pathing, benefits). Recently helped a Series A company ($11M raise) implement headcount budgeting and runway modeling to align young founders on sustainable hiring plans, and uses survey/exit-interview feedback loops to fix leadership communication and retention issues.”

“Seasoned entrepreneurial operator who has raised $185M across ventures in seed treatment, drone spraying, gene editing, and biofuels. Has worked closely with accelerators including AgLaunch and Iowa Startup Accelerator as both a participant and later a mentor, and is now open to either founding a new impactful company or stepping into an experienced CEO/C-suite role.”

Douglas Green

Screened ReferencesModerate rec.

Executive sales and marketing leader specializing in language services and healthcare

Austin, TX27y exp

“Mission-driven builder focused on transforming education by embedding entrepreneurial mindset training into student learning. Already runs a fellowship for Alpha School/University of Austin students and is developing FounderOS, a remote cohort-based platform built on an entrepreneurial knowledge graph, learning science, and gamification. Brings unusually deep ecosystem knowledge from studying 1,000+ global founder programs.”

“Audio designer/editor with a producer background who edits music and SFX as a compositional tool—shaping narrative tension in projects like a stop-motion horror short film and optimizing pacing for YouTube retention. Runs an end-to-end, template-driven post workflow (dialogue cleanup, bussing, automation, loudness targets, and stem deliverables) designed for fast, high-volume iteration.”

“Influencer/creator partnerships and growth marketer with 4 years at Desenio building a performance-rated creator roster and negotiating long-term collaborations. Led GTM for Hubble Connected’s Hubble the Bear using a full-funnel, multi-channel approach (Meta/Google retargeting, email, affiliates), beating pre-order targets by 80% and converting 75% of buyers into paid app subscribers.”

“Veteran basketball leader with 20+ years coaching at the high school/college level who also owns and operates a large youth/AAU organization and officiates at a high level. Brings a relationship-driven recruiting mindset (athletes, parents, coaches) plus daily social-media scouting and video-based communication/training experience, with strong knowledge of key exposure events like GymRat Challenge and regional showcases.”

Kenneth Spenard

Screened

Executive Business Owner specializing in operations, finance, and growth strategy

Scarborough, Maine32y exp

“Operator/owner with hands-on experience acquiring and optimizing a moving & storage business, including selecting and implementing a CRM/CSM system that doubled the sales sign rate (33% to 67%) and streamlined estimating. Strong in KPI/cash-flow-driven operational improvement, warehouse/storage workflow design, and mentoring founders/executives by reverse-engineering goals into executable plans; previously co-built and sold a scaffold company after 13 years.”

Tejas Belakavadi Kemparaju

Screened

Mid-Level Software Engineer specializing in backend, microservices, and ML systems

Newark, NJ3y exp

“Primary designer/implementer/maintainer of an open-source JavaScript library for programmatic SSML generation and validation in text-to-speech pipelines. Focused on safety-by-default APIs with vendor-specific extension adapters, strong backward compatibility/deprecation practices, and measurable performance gains by removing redundant validation stages. Emphasizes developer experience through example-driven documentation and systematic community issue triage.”

Sakethram Marpu

Screened

Junior Investment Analyst specializing in AI & DeepTech

Bengaluru, India2y exp

“VC-style founder sourcer who uses technical signals (GitHub) and niche communities (Elpha/Indie Hackers/Discord) to identify early-stage opportunities, including thesis-driven sourcing in applied AI infrastructure/observability from YC W24. Emphasizes value-first LinkedIn outreach and long-horizon relationship building (e.g., built a personal relationship with Snitch’s CTO who later reached out first about a new startup).”

“Early-stage sales hire who joined a startup just 2-3 months after launch and built their own outbound motion in a low-process environment. They describe strong self-sourced selling, including persistent multi-channel outreach that led to a large account win, and later partnered with a teammate and CEO to create a playbook that lifted office performance by 60%+.”

“Product/UX designer with experience digitizing Penske trucking operations and Ridecell fleet lifecycle/workshop orchestration systems. Designs complex, high-liability industrial workflows using a state-driven interaction model and a calm, high-clarity visual language, backed by targeted field research with drivers and ops teams and strong collaboration with engineers (React/Tailwind, Storybook, code-linked prototypes).”

Sloan Caplan

Screened

Executive Manufacturing & Operations Leader specializing in strategy, MRP, and growth

Lancaster, PA29y exp

“Operations-focused leader/advisor who has spun up and redirected an internal startup into a standalone division with full P&L ownership, introducing tech-enabled order tracking and a weekly management operating cadence. Experienced driving change in legacy environments through transparency and KPI-driven execution, with additional advisory work supporting founders/executives through M&A and working-capital/inventory discipline.”

Mikhail Sharapov

Screened

Senior Game Designer specializing in gameplay systems, progression, and mobile core loops

Buenos Aires, Argentina8y exp

“UE5 gameplay/animation scripter who built a shipped, data-driven modular third-person locomotion framework primarily in Blueprints, owning animation blueprint logic, movement-state architecture, and designer-facing tunables. Addressed shipping-quality issues like animation popping/state desync under rapid direction changes and network-latency simulation using buffered transitions, velocity smoothing, and debug visualization, while aligning data flow/ownership with engineering, animation, and QA.”

“Two-time founder and former CTO/CPO who has shipped and operated full-stack products solo, including a real-time community platform (Twitter/Slack-like) with Next.js/TypeScript, WebSockets, Redis, and strong post-launch analytics (PostHog/Sentry). Also built durable multi-step AI-agent workflows using Inngest with state machines, checkpointing, and validation gates, and has hands-on Postgres performance tuning experience validated via EXPLAIN ANALYZE.”

“Marketing designer with hands-on experience delivering high-impact physical brand experiences, including end-to-end trade show booth/space design for Payactiv across 5+ events (booth layouts, walls, print collateral, and swag) with heavy cross-functional and vendor coordination. Also builds scalable Figma systems for frequent landing-page production and produces lightweight marketing videos in CapCut using templates, AI background removal, and platform-specific exports.”

“Operations-focused leader/advisor who repeatedly helps growing organizations design and implement scalable internal structures using a People-Process-Technology framework, process mapping, and KPI-driven management. Notable wins include building a delivery operations function after a multi-million-dollar bespoke sale and cutting customer service effort by 30% in a month by shifting from email to structured intake and measurement. Also coaches executives (including remote-management capability) and runs quarterly continuous-improvement cycles to keep ops aligned as companies evolve.”

“Startup-focused tech leader with 20+ years of experience who has led engineering teams across multiple startups and pitched inside VC firms. Currently building infrastructure for managing physical wealth—creating a canonical data layer that integrates with wealth management systems to account for precious metals and other tangible assets—and is prepared to raise capital to align with the right partners.”

“Performance marketer with experience owning a high-spend B2B SaaS account (>$100K/month) primarily on Google Ads, generating ~80 quality leads/month. Uses A/B testing across landing pages, ad copy, and keywords and reports results via Looker/Power BI with a KPI-driven approach to scaling and troubleshooting.”

Berkan Özgür

Screened

Senior XR Engineer specializing in spatial computing and cross-platform Unity systems

San Jose, CA9y exp

“XR/Unity developer who built an underwater experience (Visutate) featuring reactive flocking fish that respond to user presence and hand-feeding interactions. Also implemented multiplayer using Unity Netcode, addressing sync challenges via reduced streamed data and client-side prediction; prefers impactful work in startup-style environments.”

Mark Eagle

Screened

Executive Technology & Operations Leader (CTO/COO) specializing in scaling SaaS and enterprise software

Denver, Colorado29y exp

“Operations leader and advisor (former COO at College Partnership; also worked with Founders Advisors) who rebuilds and scales early-stage operations using Lean Startup experimentation and KPI-driven execution. Notably centralized a call-center function, implemented scripts/SLAs/metrics, and iterated staffing based on conversion and response-time data while mentoring non-ops founders on MVPs, SMART goals, and tactical operating plans.”

“Full-stack TypeScript/React/Next.js builder who created an end-to-end customer-facing product (AI Job Master) that generates personalized outreach from resumes and job descriptions. Demonstrates strong product + engineering ownership with rapid MVP iteration, instrumentation-driven prioritization, and pragmatic reliability patterns (microservices, queues, correlation IDs, retries) while tackling a key AI challenge: user trust and output consistency.”

“Cloud/distributed-systems engineer who has shipped real-time, offline-capable ledger/expense infrastructure and solved tricky cross-layer production bugs (carrier handoff retries causing duplicate writes) using packet captures and device logs. Also built modular Python ETL/catalog pipelines for e-commerce with config-toggled plugins for customer-specific pricing/SKU rules, and iterated product changes directly with on-site fulfillment operators using feature flags.”

Matthew Affinito

Screened

Entry-Level Entrepreneurship & Product Strategy Candidate in EdTech and Innovation

San Luis Obispo, CA

“Founder who spent a year building an EdTech startup (Hopscotch) and developed high-volume outbound sourcing skills from zero-intro outreach across LinkedIn, cold email, and communities. Demonstrates strong EdTech GTM understanding (school district purchasing) and uses transparent, research-driven relationship building to turn cold outreach into high-quality founder/investor conversations that influence product direction.”

“Serial founder and fractional CTO with 8 companies founded and 3 exits, now looking to commit full-time to a venture-backable startup. Currently advising two startups that recently raised $400K friends-and-family and $1M pre-seed, and brings thoughtful perspective on venture-scale economics, team quality, and AI disruption risk.”