Vetted Founders

Conway Cheng Cheng

Screened

Executive transformation leader specializing in global risk architecture and financial services

Dallas, TX26y exp

“Advisory and financial-services professional with exposure to PE/VC boards, Big 4 strategic partnerships, and innovation labs, now exploring a commercialization venture via a venture studio model. Brings a structured approach to building new businesses—combining Design Thinking, feasibility testing, rapid prototyping, and SBIR-backed R&D strategy with cross-border market entry and enterprise modernization experience.”

“Game UI engineer with shipped experience on Paladins (Unreal Engine 3/C++), including an in-game store with automated grid-based recommendation layout and an inventory UI built for PC/PlayStation/Xbox/Switch. Emphasizes production readiness through clean separation of UI/data, strong documentation for engineering and content workflows, and memory-conscious UI patterns (pooled entries/paged navigation) for constrained platforms like Switch.”

“Operations-focused leader specializing in rebuilding and scaling marketing/product/commercial operating models during rapid growth and leadership change. Known for implementing integrated quarterly planning, intake/resourcing, and KPI reporting systems that de-silo teams (including B2B enterprise, sales, and marketing) and create predictable execution, clearer decision rights, and scalable operating rhythms.”

Rom Manzano

Screened

Executive technical founder and full-stack engineer specializing in AI, SaaS, and FinTech

New York, NY15y exp

“Engineer coming out of a venture studio as it winds down, now seeking another zero-to-one environment with strong studio support and go-to-market playbooks. They show a thoughtful founder mindset centered on rapid shipping, design-partner validation, lean execution, and testing whether users will actually pay for a workflow-specific solution.”

Ananda Kanagaraj Sankar

Screened

Engineering Leader specializing in marketplace monetization, pricing, payments, and trust & safety

San Jose, CA14y exp

“Early-stage founder in the ideation phase who previously took a hackathon concept in digital accessibility from prototype to a scalable SaaS platform, validating with developers, government web teams, and accessibility experts; the product was selected for deployment by the Indian Government. Strong focus on MVP validation, leveraging AI/automation, and building with limited resources; requires visa sponsorship due to immigration status.”

“Operator with consulting and startup experience who has led founder-level, zero-to-one initiatives across highly complex domains—from conceiving and launching an $80M, 80m maritime disaster-response vessel for Global Support & Development (Sergey Brin’s org) to acting as a cross-functional leader at Windfall Bio spanning regulatory, GTM, partnerships, and R&D. At Deloitte, owned the Omnia ESG software roadmap and drove >30% faster delivery through standardization/automation, and was tapped to train other managers on their operating cadence system.”

“Co-founded academic-index (10,000+ users) and built a full-stack Next.js 14 document upload + client-side OCR + Gemini-powered analysis pipeline with strong production reliability (custom monitoring, retries, quality gates) and measurable gains (accuracy ~94%→98.5%, failures down ~60%). Also owns end-to-end biometric data visualization and a data-driven brand/UX overhaul at pre-seed health/performance startup Absolute Rest, with a background running a multi-client dev studio (Zen Digital).”

Dexin Huang

Screened

Junior AI Engineer specializing in LLM systems, RAG, and full-stack automation

Guilford, CT1y exp

“Built and deployed an AI receptionist product for field-service businesses (HVAC/electrician), including real-time Jobber scheduling integrations and Twilio-based calling. Combines hands-on customer/operator shadowing with strong production engineering (queueing to handle API limits, rigorous testing/mocking, mirrored prod environment) and cross-layer troubleshooting, driving user adoption through review/override workflows.”

“Former VC and angel investor with board experience (Sand Hill Angels) who has raised money for their own companies and helped over two dozen companies prepare for fundraising and M&A. Strong fit for CEO roles in venture-backed environments given extensive capital markets and deal-prep exposure.”

“Entrepreneurial candidate building an AI startup focused on helping companies find product-market fit. They are already at MVP stage with 3 beta customers and are using A/B testing for validation, showing early traction and a hands-on approach to customer-driven product development.”

Estime Aristomene

Screened

Executive CTO specializing in regulated FinTech payments and AML

Dallas, TX21y exp

“Founder of two bootstrapped ventures—Brain Matched, a career tech platform, and AIqorx, a software/infrastructure company. Distinguishes themself as a builder focused on modular, scalable technical infrastructure that reduces technical debt and speeds execution, with a venture-studio mindset around creating shared tech stacks that give portfolio companies an advantage.”