Vetted Founders

“Early major technical hire who helped build fintech startup Ugami from MVP to near Series A, while supporting bridge round and Series A fundraising with technical materials for leadership. Also grew from intern to lead engineer at a venture-backed product shop, giving him firsthand exposure to investor expectations, startup incubation, and practical AI opportunities with tight scope and strong unit economics.”

“Operator and fractional COO who thrives as an early-stage builder: she joined a coaching company as its first full-time hire, built the full operational backbone, and helped scale it from $20K monthly revenue to seven-figure annual revenue for three straight years. Her background blends hands-on startup execution across HR, finance, fulfillment, and systems with prior experience supporting technical product builds in healthcare and a Silicon Valley agency working in metaverse, AR, and gaming.”

“Founder/partner of two staffing companies and former Chief Strategy Officer who led executive-level strategy including acquiring a locums staffing firm and scaling it from $4M to $14M revenue in one year. Experienced recruiting leader managing up to 15 recruiters (and recruiting leaders), known for building repeatable processes, coaching managers, and improving recruiting workflows while preventing burnout.”

“Founder building SmartTreeQuote, an AI-powered quoting and lead qualification platform for tree service companies, created from direct operator pain points and validated via an image-based remote quoting workflow. Has already built a targeted customer acquisition motion resulting in 5 active paying subscribers, and brings experience proposing AI-driven workflow automation to remove operational bottlenecks in a high-volume install environment.”

TaylorSimone Caldwell

Screened

Mid-level Sales & Marketing professional specializing in CRM-driven growth and social media

New York, New York4y exp

“Outbound-focused sales/business development professional who owns the full motion from list building and decision-maker research through multi-channel sequencing (email/cold call/LinkedIn) and qualification (including financial/legal documentation). Has experience stepping into new/early-stage locations with no process, auditing lead data, and implementing a readiness-based framework plus CRM automation (HubSpot/Salesforce/Yardi/Nestio) to improve follow-up and pipeline generation.”

august hurtado

Screened

Junior outside sales professional specializing in logistics and transportation

New York, NY2y exp

“Founder of Storage Scholars who generated and closed 75+ leads in just 6 weeks while entering a new market solo, combining cold outreach with grassroots campus and Facebook-group marketing. Also brings SMB and mid-market outbound experience, using Apollo, trigger-based personalization, and ROI-led messaging to engage decision-makers and improve close rates.”

Benjamin Evans

Screened

Mid-level XR Software Engineer specializing in mixed reality and interactive applications

Nashville, TN5y exp

“Interactive systems engineer with a niche background building high-visibility Unity experiences for museums and public venues, including the Smithsonian and Georgia Aquarium. Has led architecture for multi-kiosk networked installations, integrated OpenAI-powered character experiences, and rebuilt a social-VR face/eye-tracking app with on-device ML, localization in 30 languages, and Steam delivery.”

“Growth creative marketer at Ampure focused on paid efficiency for portable EV chargers; ran a controlled Meta creative test reframing spec-heavy messaging into real-world EV use cases, delivering ~22% lower CPA and ~28% higher ROAS. Operates with a modular, rapid-iteration creative system across Meta/TikTok/YouTube and provides tight, performance-driven briefs to creators/editors.”

Gabriel Cubas

Screened

Senior Game Developer specializing in real-time shaders (HLSL/GLSL)

17y exp

“Unity XR developer who built custom MetaXR hand-tracking gesture controls that materially improved VR usability (95% satisfaction in a live event). Led technical research and helped secure an RFP with Meta as the client, and has hands-on multiplayer experience (PUN2/Netcode) including a multiplayer AR ping-pong experience for Niantic plus MMORPG freelance work.”

Vinicius Leite

Screened

Staff/Lead Game Engineer specializing in gameplay systems and VR

Los Angeles, USA22y exp

“Unity gameplay programmer with hands-on multiplayer networking experience (Photon Fusion, Mirror, SmartFox, Unity networking), including client-side prediction and rollback to smooth networked movement under lag/packet loss. Recently improved a fast-paced 2D platformer’s feel by adding momentum/velocity “gears,” validated through internal cohorts and volunteer/friends-and-family playtests. Comfortable in both startup and large-company environments and currently seeking a high-impact, intensive project.”

“Unity gameplay engineer who has shipped mobile and Meta Quest VR titles, leveraging DOTS/ECS for large-scale war/rts-style scenes and mobile performance. Built multiplayer features using Photon PUN 2 with PlayFab matchmaking/backend and implemented live network debugging/recovery strategies. Also prototyped an AI/LLM-assisted pipeline for generating and validating gameplay/level content via structured JSON with fallbacks and caching to control reliability and cost.”

Antonio Walker

Screened

Senior Technical Lead and Full-Stack Engineer specializing in cloud, AI, and enterprise platforms

Irvine, CA13y exp

“Engineering leader and player-coach who says he joined Freeing Returns during a transition from sales-led services to SaaS, architected the platform from the ground up, and helped hire a 10+ person team across engineering, product, and delivery. He also describes leading an AI-based fraud detection system on Salesforce with data lake and pipeline architecture, combining startup build-from-scratch execution with hands-on technical leadership.”

Mila Chernik

Screened

Executive strategy and operations leader specializing in SaaS, payments, and AI

New York, NY17y exp

“Operator and transformation leader with deep SaaS/payments experience across fintech, ecommerce, retail, and hospitality. Has led large cross-functional organizations through Agile, portfolio, and architecture transformations, including $20M ARR impact at Movex and major performance/cost gains at HS-Soft. Also brings founder-level strategic advisory experience, building ROI cases for growth and AI automation investments.”

“Unity gameplay programmer who built a high-impact "furniture influence" system for a RimWorld-like base builder, adding spatial synergy that changed how players approached building. Also helped remaster a prior title by adding live-service multiplayer using PlayFab for lobby/matchmaking and LiteNetLib reliable UDP, validated via stress tests with simulated clients for a smooth release.”

Emmanuel Eruck

Screened

Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer specializing in AI and FinTech

Toronto, Canada8y exp

“Frontend engineer who led the mentorAi SaaS platform UI end-to-end at IBL.ai, building real-time React/Redux experiences backed by WebSockets and scaling quality with Playwright E2E tests in GitHub CI. Also worked at Paymentology for ~2 years on fintech features (token management, Visa card creation/assignment and funding flows), modernizing an existing React codebase by introducing TypeScript and strengthening CI/coverage with SonarQube to reduce deployment bugs.”

“Built and deployed a Unity-based, NSF-funded medical interaction system for the University of Houston MRI Lab, combining speech recognition, LLaMA-based function calling, and real-time simulation controls. Particularly strong in taking experimental AI systems from discovery through stabilization, with measurable impact including roughly 50% faster task completion than traditional point-and-click workflows.”

Eltayeb Yousif

Screened

Entry-level sales and growth professional specializing in Web3 and data-driven marketing

Brooklyn, NY1y exp

“Outbound-focused sales candidate from Ridgeway with a strong founding-SDR mindset, generating 15-25 meetings and 8-12 SQL-level opportunities per month while influencing $40k-$80k in monthly pipeline. Stands out for building structured, research-driven outbound systems and using personalized, multithreaded outreach tied to real business triggers like product launches and growth hiring.”

Nachshon Fertel

Screened

Executive startup founder and product engineer specializing in marketplace platforms

Minneapolis, MN12y exp

“Repeat founder currently building Unhookt, a digital wellness app, after co-founding Poplin and helping raise $10M in VC funding in 2021. He has already completed Unhookt’s frontend MVP, is building the backend, and is gathering early user feedback while navigating the shift from metrics-driven Series A fundraising to vision-led pre-seed pitching.”

“Seasoned engineering leader and Fractional CTO with 20+ years of experience helping startups navigate the transition from early product traction to scalable operations. Particularly strong in stepping into VC-backed, high-growth environments, stabilizing fragile MVP-era systems, and aligning technology strategy with business, operational, and fundraising goals.”