Vetted Mentorship Professionals

Mazhar Haq

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Senior AWS Cloud Architect and Technical Leader specializing in security, migrations, and cost governance

Santa Monica, CA26y exp

“Infrastructure/platform engineer with strong AWS and hybrid on-prem networking depth, spanning Kubernetes platform engineering (IaC, autoscaling, GitOps, observability) and large-scale VMware operations. Managed thousands of VMs across 56 US military bases/airports and has resolved real production hybrid incidents involving BGP/Direct Connect route advertisement and prefix-limit constraints.”

Steve Black

Screened ReferencesStrong rec.

Principal Product Manager specializing in consumer engagement, AI, and connected fitness

Laguna Beach, CA15y exp

“Product leader with experience across Nike, Adidas, Bowflex, and startups, including serving as the first digital product hire at FluidLogic. Stands out for launching a connected hardware-plus-software product from zero to one in just 90 days, while also building AI-powered consumer features and aligning the entire company around digital strategy.”

“Engineering leader with hands-on Android architecture expertise who has scaled mobile teams at Weedmaps (including forming a Platform team and rolling out MVVM/unit testing) and also co-founded a bootstrapped side business (Sizzle), owning the technical roadmap, hiring strategy (university pipeline + senior remote engineers in Pakistan), and stepping into fundraising when runway became critical.”

“Backend/AI engineer who has built a rule-service platform on AWS and evolved it into an agentic RAG system using LangChain, ReAct, tool calling, and LLM-as-judge review. Notable for combining heavy AI-assisted development with production safeguards like manual CR, CloudWatch monitoring, fallback strategies, benchmark testing, and user-feedback-driven model improvement.”

Alex Norman

Screened

Executive Growth & Partnerships Leader specializing in enterprise GTM and platform ecosystems

Miami, FL26y exp

“Repeat entrepreneur (Babson entrepreneurship grad) with two prior company exits and deep accelerator/VC ecosystem experience (YC alum; Techstars and Endeavor mentor; advisor to High Alpha). Currently piloting an AI solution for emergency response planning focused on people with conditions (aging/disabled), reporting 75%+ readiness score improvements and leveraging a proprietary behavioral crisis dataset with anonymization and security controls; also authored an Amazon-bestselling book on related solutions.”

“CTO-minded builder seeking to join a startup; previously created an AI-driven platform that abstracted away DevOps and infrastructure for drug discovery researchers. Emphasizes high-leverage, zero-to-one execution with managed cloud/open-source tooling, and a strong reliability/reproducibility mindset validated against existing scientific pipelines.”

Brayden Tremper

Screened

Senior Software Engineer specializing in game UI systems and gameplay features

Olympia, WA4y exp

“Unity/C# game engineer with hands-on ownership of live-service systems, including a real-time multi-channel chat feature for Squid Game: Unleashed that launched alongside Squid Game Season 2 on Netflix and increased player retention and engagement. Brings a strong blend of mobile performance optimization, server-authoritative architecture, multiplayer systems, and practical experimentation with LLM-assisted narrative tooling.”

“Operator with a rare mix of commercial banking, high-growth fintech, SaaS strategy/operations, and CEO office experience. Started in quantitative finance at Citibank, built customer acquisition playbooks at Ramp, and most recently drove cross-functional planning and acquisition integration work at MoneyLion while partnering with senior leadership and the board.”

“ML/NLP engineer focused on production-grade data and search/recommendation systems: built an end-to-end pipeline that connects unstructured customer feedback with product data using TF-IDF/BERT, Spark, and AWS (SageMaker/S3), orchestrated with Airflow and monitored for drift. Also has hands-on experience with entity resolution at scale and improving search relevance via BERT embeddings, FAISS vector search, and domain fine-tuning validated with precision@k and A/B testing.”

Bryan Mangelson

Screened

Executive operator specializing in SaaS, cloud infrastructure, and M&A

Remote, USA11y exp

“Candidate has prior startup experience that included raising money and evaluating accelerator opportunities, giving them practical exposure to early-stage company building. They are motivated by the chance to shape company culture and vision, and they assess ideas with a mix of market research, customer interviews, and personal conviction.”

“Senior product leader from Atlassian with a strong track record in web growth, AI/ML personalization, ecommerce, and platform modernization. They led a major funnel turnaround, launched Atlassian's first self-service cloud cart that generated $75M in year one, and delivered sales automation products that drove $180M while demonstrating strong cross-functional and people leadership.”