# Max Ruderman

> Max Ruderman is the CEO of Harmonic, a New York-based data company building what he calls 'the source of truth for startups.' A former Google engineer who turned to entrepreneurship after a jiu-jitsu injury sidelined him, Ruderman helped grow Harmonic from a tool that scraped Delaware corporate filings into a real-time startup database used by investors at Floodgate, Craft Ventures, a16z, Accel, and companies like Brex, Notion, and Carta. He started as COO and became CEO, steering the company toward AI-driven sourcing with an investment agent built on LangGraph.

- **Role:** Chief Executive Officer at Harmonic
- **Organizations:** Harmonic, Google
- **Nationality:** American
- **Education:** B.S. in Labor and Industrial Relations, Cornell University, Economics and Chinese studies, Binghamton University
- **Known for:** Helped build Harmonic into what it calls the only complete real-time startup database, covering companies from incorporation through scale-up, Grew the customer base to roughly 150 organizations including Brex, Vouch, Notion, Carta, Floodgate, a16z and Accel, Oversaw a $30M total raise, with several customers converting into investors (Floodgate, Craft Ventures, Fin Capital)

## Career timeline

- **pre-2015** — Studied at Binghamton University (Economics, Chinese) and Cornell University (B.S. Labor and Industrial Relations)
- **~2015-2021** — Roughly 6.5 years at Google in analytics, data warehousing, ML/modeling and software engineering; ended as Senior Software Engineer on a Search team building tooling for UX research and design at scale
- **2021** — Joined Harmonic; served as Chief Operating Officer
- **2022-11** — Harmonic announced a $23M Series A led by Sozo Ventures with Craft Ventures (following a $7M seed led by Craft Ventures)
- **2024-2025** — Became CEO of Harmonic; shifted the company from fully remote to hybrid with NYC and SF offices; launched an AI investment agent built on LangGraph and LangSmith

## Achievements

- Helped build Harmonic into what it calls the only complete real-time startup database, covering companies from incorporation through scale-up
- Grew the customer base to roughly 150 organizations including Brex, Vouch, Notion, Carta, Floodgate, a16z and Accel
- Oversaw a $30M total raise, with several customers converting into investors (Floodgate, Craft Ventures, Fin Capital)
- Shipped an AI investment agent that cut deal research from hours to under a minute and increased positive search outcomes by ~30%
- Scaled the team past 50 (industry data lists ~70 employees), recruiting leaders from LinkedIn, Dropbox and Google

## Latest updates

- **2025-04** — Featured on the World of DaaS podcast discussing Harmonic's path 'from scraping Delaware filings to data empire' and the shift from remote to hybrid work.
- **2025-04** — LangChain case study published detailing Harmonic's LangGraph/LangSmith investment agent.

## Links

- Website: https://harmonic.ai
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxruderman/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/max-ruderman
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-11