Andrew Mao is the co-founder and CEO of Parsnip, an AI-powered learning app often called 'Duolingo for cooking' that helps novices build real confidence in the kitchen. A Harvard computer-science PhD and former computational social scientist, he ran the longest iterated prisoner's dilemma experiment ever conducted, built ML systems at neural-interface startup CTRL-labs (acquired by Facebook), and now applies the science of how people learn to the very human problem of figuring out what's for dinner.
Estimize is a financial estimates platform that crowdsources earnings-per-share and revenue forecasts from a community of more than 120,000 contributors - including buy-side, sell-side and independent analysts, students, academics and private investors. By aggregating and weighting these estimates, Estimize produces a consensus that has repeatedly proven more accurate and more timely than the traditional Wall Street sell-side consensus, and sells that data to hedge funds, asset managers and quantitative researchers. Since 2021 it has operated as part of alternative-data and quant research firm ExtractAlpha.
Wow AI is a US-registered, end-to-end AI training-data company that supplies high-quality, multilingual datasets and human-in-the-loop services - data collection, transcription, annotation, validation and RLHF - to teams building large language models, voice assistants and computer-vision systems. Its crowdsourcing network spans 170,000+ contributors across 120+ languages, with 100,000+ hours of audio and domain datasets for finance, healthcare and retail. The founding team has since extended the vision into AIxBlock, a decentralized platform for building, training and deploying AI, and WowDAO, a community-owned AI ecosystem.
Transit is a Montreal-based mobile app that turns the chaos of public transportation into a single, legible screen. It aggregates real-time schedules, GPS vehicle locations, and crowdsourced rider data across more than 1,100 cities in dozens of countries, layering in bikeshare, carshare, ridehail, microtransit, and mobile ticketing so people can navigate a city without owning a car. Founded by Sam Vermette and Guillaume Campagna, Transit partners directly with transit agencies who endorse and increasingly sponsor the app for their riders.
Centaur AI (Centaur Labs) is a Boston-based healthcare data annotation platform that taps a network of 50,000+ vetted medical and scientific experts to label, evaluate, and monitor the multimodal data that powers medical AI. Born out of MIT's Center for Collective Intelligence, the company uses performance-weighted 'wisdom of the crowd' methods - delivered through its gamified DiagnosUs app - to produce labels that match or beat individual specialists, on a HIPAA-compliant, SOC 2 platform.
Vinesh Jha is the founder and CEO of ExtractAlpha, an independent alternative-data research firm that turns messy datasets into tradable signals for hedge funds and institutional investors. A pure-mathematician-turned-quant, he cut his teeth ranking Wall Street analysts at StarMine, built systematic strategies at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and PDT Partners, then went out on his own in 2013. After ExtractAlpha merged with the crowdsourced-estimates platform Estimize in 2021, he runs both, leading a team spread across Hong Kong, the US, Europe, and Canada with a near-religious insistence on rigorous, point-in-time testing over a good story.
Wiser Solutions is a San Mateo-based retail intelligence company that gives brands and retailers real-time data and insights to win at the moment a shopper decides to buy. Its SaaS platform spans price intelligence, MAP monitoring, market intelligence, and in-store retail execution - tracking more than 10 billion products, 150,000 sellers, and 600,000 stores across 45+ countries. Trusted by 700+ global brands and retailers including Amazon, Ferrero, Beko, and Best Buy.
Minted is a San Francisco design marketplace that turns crowdsourced art from independent artists into holiday cards, wedding invitations, wall art, and home decor printed on demand. Founded in 2007 by Mariam Naficy, the company runs continuous design competitions where its community of 15,000+ artists submit work, customers vote, and winning designs are produced and sold worldwide.
Melissa Kim is the Co-Founder and CEO of Minted, the San Francisco-based design marketplace that connects consumers with independent artists for premium stationery, art, and home decor. Hired in 2007 as Director of Finance and Strategy straight out of Stanford Business School, she was later named co-founder by Mariam Naficy in recognition of her foundational role in building the company. Under her leadership as CEO, Minted surpassed $300 million in revenue in 2026, with double-digit year-over-year growth, a wholesale business that grew 31% in 2025, and profitability that doubled - all fueled by a sharp premium-market focus and an owned-channel marketing strategy built on the virality of physical design.
Amy Pritchard is the founder and CEO of ModSquad, a global leader in outsourced digital engagement services. A former commercial litigator, she launched the company in 2007 inside a virtual bar in Second Life with four colleagues - their first gig was guarding Newt Gingrich's avatar. Today ModSquad runs 10,000+ independent contractors across 70 countries, serving clients from the NFL to the U.S. Department of State with customer support, content moderation, trust and safety, and community management - blending agentic AI with high-EQ human expertise.
Mark Godley is the CEO of LeadGenius, a Berkeley-based B2B data intelligence platform that combines AI with human computation to deliver precision contact data for enterprise go-to-market teams. A self-described C-suite startup junkie with 30 years of SaaS expertise, Godley joined LeadGenius in 2017 — first as President, then stepping into the CEO role — and has driven the company's pivot from a service-heavy model to a scalable SaaS platform serving 400+ enterprise customers across 42 countries including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, and Autodesk. Under his leadership, LeadGenius has distinguished itself as the first crowdsourcing company to set a minimum wage tied to the cost of living in each country of operation, building a global decentralized workforce of data researchers while remaining GDPR and CCPA compliant.
Prayag Narula is the Co-Founder and CEO of Marvin (HeyMarvin), an AI-native customer insights platform that centralizes, analyzes, and shares qualitative research data for product and UX teams. A researcher-turned-entrepreneur, he previously co-founded LeadGenius (Y Combinator W2011), which raised over $30 million and grew to hundreds of employees before he stepped down to return to his roots in user-centric design. With a graduate research background spanning UC Berkeley's School of Information and Helsinki's Ubiquitous Interaction Group, Narula built Marvin alongside his brother Chirag Narula in 2020 — this time with AI baked in from the ground up. The platform now serves 4,000+ teams and 13,000+ users, including 10 Fortune 100 companies.