Vetted Mentors

Richie Bavasso

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Executive healthcare venture builder specializing in MedTech, digital health, and AI diagnostics

North Charleston, SC32y exp

“Five-time entrepreneur with 25 years across startups, venture studios, and accelerators, including current advisory work with MassChallenge, VentureWell, Scottish Development International, and German Accelerator/Start 2 Group. Most recently helped lead a UK MedTech company through multiple raises totaling over £11M plus grants, while driving FDA clearance, MVP completion, and US customer launch in a tough fundraising market.”

Oyku Yamakoglu

Screened

Senior Game Developer specializing in interactive systems and real-time graphics

New York, NY6y exp

“Lead Programmer and Technical Artist on the 3D isometric boss-battler RPG Highrollers, where they owned core gameplay and technical architecture for an 11-person team. They stand out for building modular Unity/C# systems that improved iteration speed, plus adjacent experience in real-time vision/inference pipelines and small-scale multiplayer using Photon and Unity Netcode.”

Stephan Thomas

Screened

Executive growth strategist specializing in technology, M&A, and digital manufacturing

San Francisco, CA25y exp

“Repeat founder who has co-founded two companies and sold the most recent one three years ago. Currently exploring a fintech-style debt management tool for SMBs focused on covenant monitoring, reporting, and forecasting, and is still in customer discovery with a mock demo and landing page. Brings a thoughtful, customer-first approach to evaluating startup ideas and a solid understanding of how venture studios support companies from 0 to 1.”

Andrew Gould

Screened

Executive revenue leader specializing in Enterprise SaaS and public sector GTM

Saint Petersburg, FL12y exp

“Sales leader who grew from hands-on individual contributor to building and running an entire SaaS revenue organization, taking a startup from zero revenue to acquisition and contributing to another business reaching a $500M acquisition. Particularly strong in complex, multi-stakeholder higher education sales, with hundreds of public-sector-adjacent deals closed and a standout competitive win strategy that captured 150 accounts after a rival merger.”

“Chief of Staff/operator who joined venture-backed startup Blockless at the pre-seed stage and built the operating system from scratch while acting as the founder’s right hand. Combines startup execution, fundraising support, and deep Web3/DeFi domain fluency, including helping close a $3.5M seed round ahead of schedule with clean diligence materials.”

“Serial CEO, startup operator, and capital raiser who says he has raised over $1B and led 5 high-growth tech-enabled businesses to successful exits. He combines fundraising, venture-building, regulatory problem-solving, and brand creation—highlighted by scaling Ventete, mentoring for a decade in venture networks, partnering at TIFIN, and helping create proprietary financial structures that processed $12.5B in deal flow.”

Subhash Chandra

Screened

Senior AI/ML & Robotics Research Engineer specializing in SLAM and multi-modal perception

Norman, OK8y exp

“Robotics engineer who built a smart campus tour robot on a Kobuki Turtlebot using ROS 1, implementing a full navigation stack (semantic world model, A* planner, tour executor, path follower) and integrating SLAM (gmapping) plus a hybrid reactive safety controller. Experienced taking systems from Gazebo simulation to real hardware, including extensive real-world debugging and Docker-based development to handle ROS/Ubuntu version constraints; planning a move to ROS 2 on Turtlebot 4.”

Laurie Myers

Screened

Executive Biopharma Operator specializing in drug development, commercialization, and board leadership

Kansas City, MO38y exp

“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.”

“2x co-founder with 2+ years in venture, where they led deal sourcing and built systems to surface roughly 3,500 deals annually using relationship networks, scout programs, and AI tools. Brings a rare mix of founder experience and investor-side pattern recognition, with strong conviction around solving real, monetizable problems.”

Samuel Lee

Screened

Executive Sales Leader specializing in Enterprise SaaS GTM and global revenue growth

Hoboken, NJ14y exp

“Revenue/sales operations and GTM builder for early-stage startups who designs repeatable sales processes (CRM pipeline stages, MEDDPICC, Challenger Sales) and operating cadences (OKRs) to improve conversion and forecasting. Also mentors product/technical founders—e.g., through the Canadian Technology Accelerator—helping a fintech founder establish segmentation, metrics, and an outbound motion that produced early recurring revenue and investor readiness.”

“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.”

“Serial entrepreneur and entrepreneurship instructor at Montana State University currently bootstrapping MEETR (meetr.pro), a platform targeting snowsports instructors and outdoor guides, with early customers acquired via paid social, SEO, paid search, and cold outreach. Previously built and scaled EXEC from zero to one to 25,000+ members, culminating in acquisition by Community.co after selling into elite professional organizations and private clubs.”

John Kalyango

Screened

Senior Full-Stack Software Engineer specializing in geospatial and mobile data collection

Germany9y exp

“Frontend engineer who led end-to-end development of a React-based carbon credits data collection and analysis tool, focusing on scalable architecture and performance (code splitting, SWR caching, memoization, Lighthouse monitoring). Experienced building complex route-driven TypeScript wizards with Redux/Rematch state persistence, and refactoring legacy monolithic UI into reusable, tested, documented components while shipping deadline-driven features using feature flags and tight QA collaboration.”

Sufyan Shaikh

Screened

Director of Growth Marketing specializing in multi-channel acquisition and attribution

Remote, Canada9y exp

“Growth and partnerships leader spanning creator ecosystem and B2B SaaS GTM. Drove measurable revenue outcomes by combining performance-based creator deals (including whitelisting/retargeting and geo lift testing) with a repeatable demand engine using Google Search, LinkedIn ABM, AI-personalized outbound, and HubSpot automation—scaling MRR from $15K to $110K and lifting trial-to-paid conversion from ~3.4% to ~9% via persona-based onboarding.”

Iasha King

Screened

Director-level talent relations and booking professional in sports, entertainment, and fitness

Los Angeles, CA9y exp

“Operator focused on founder sourcing, screening, and partnership development across accelerator and enterprise innovation programs. They helped drive nearly 300 applications and 75 founder calls for the Real California Milk accelerator, and managed a P&G founder engagement in the AI/marketing space that ultimately led to an investment.”