Tagged: founder
30 results
Will Villanueva
Will Villanueva is the co-founder and CEO of DELV (formerly Element Finance), a San Francisco-based decentralized finance company building fixed and variable yield markets on Ethereum. A physicist by training and former Ethereum researcher at ConsenSys, he co-founded Element Finance with Jonny Rhea in 2020 to bring fixed-rate income to DeFi. The company raised a $32M Series A in 2021 at a $320M valuation and later rebranded to DELV, whose flagship product Hyperdrive reimagines fixed and variable rate markets with an everlasting-liquidity AMM design.
Wonjun Jeong
Wonjun Jeong is the co-founder and CEO of Supermove, a San Francisco software company that replaces the paper contracts and typewriters still common in the moving industry with a single cloud platform for sales, dispatch, scheduling, signatures, payments, and payroll. A UC Berkeley computer science graduate who wrote code at Facebook and Pinterest, he started Supermove in 2019 after moving 21 times and watching movers scratch his credit card number into a paper form with a fingernail. The company raised an $18 million Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz in 2022 and works with more than 100 moving and storage firms.
Woodrow Levin
Woodrow 'Woody' Levin is the founder and CEO of Extend, a San Francisco company that built an API-first platform letting online merchants offer extended warranties, product protection, shipping protection and post-purchase solutions. Often described as 'AppleCare for everything else,' Extend raised a $260M Series C led by SoftBank's Vision Fund 2 in 2021 at a valuation above $1.6 billion. A serial entrepreneur, Levin previously founded BringIt (acquired by International Game Technology), Estate Assist (acquired by DocuSign, where he became VP of Growth), and the crypto asset fund 3.0 Capital. He also sits on the board of DraftKings.
Xin Du
Xin Du (Steven Xin Du) is the founder and CEO of WONZ Technology, a medical-device and digital-health startup building consumer devices for smokers and non-invasive bioelectronic products. A trained scientist with postdoctoral research experience tied to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, Du crossed from the lab into venture capital as a founding partner of Niniu Capital and founder of Neeo Fund before starting WONZ in 2020. He splits his world between a San Francisco base and a Hong Kong-registered company, running a small team that has filed more than a hundred patents and raised through Series A.
Yang Cai
Yang Cai is the co-founder, chairman, president and CEO of VisualOn, a San Jose video technology company he started in 2003. A computer scientist with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, Cai built his career in digital media engineering, including work on one of the industry's first real-time software MPEG-2 encoders. At VisualOn he has guided the company from cross-platform media player SDKs into AI-driven video compression, notably the Optimizer content-adaptive encoding engine that cuts streaming bitrates by 40 to 50 percent while lowering energy use.
Giacomo Cambiaso
Giacomo Cambiaso is the co-founder and CEO of Public Technologies (PUBT, publicnow.com), a New York news-technology company that collects, organizes and distributes tens of thousands of press releases, company announcements and government statements every day in dozens of languages. A former newspaper journalist who spent about a decade reporting before turning to automation, he built and exited an earlier content-clipping venture and now focuses on making publicly disclosed information from companies, governments and economic organizations accessible to media outlets, information providers and financial institutions.
Yingqi Wang
Yingqi Wang is the founder and CEO of ONES.com, an all-in-one software development and R&D management platform used by teams to plan, track, test, and ship software. A self-taught programmer since fifth grade, he spent seven years at Kingsoft working on WPS and antivirus products, then founded Zhengdian Technology, whose Zhengdian Alarm Clock app reached over 100 million users. After a stint as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Morningside Venture Capital, he launched ONES in 2015 to give engineers and technical managers a single connected toolchain. ONES has raised roughly $100M+ across rounds and serves large enterprises across China and beyond, positioning itself as a direct challenger to Atlassian.
Zouhair Belkoura
Zouhair Belkoura is the founder and CEO of Keepsafe, a San Francisco company that builds a family of consumer privacy apps used by tens of millions of people worldwide. A former electrical engineering PhD who researched mobile video coding, he has built Keepsafe around the idea that privacy is a form of freedom and that ordinary people deserve simple tools to control their personal photos, messages, and browsing. He is a frequent writer and speaker on the difference between abstract data privacy and the content privacy that actually matters to people's daily lives.
Yu-Sung Chang
Yu-Sung Chang is the co-founder, CEO and CTO of Vivity AI, an industrial AI company building software for heavy industries like petrochemicals, shipbuilding and manufacturing. A computer scientist with a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University, he spent years at Wolfram Research working on Mathematica's graphics and geometry systems before moving into e-commerce technology leadership as CTO of Korea's SSG.COM and co-founding the healthcare AI startup Huma.AI. In 2022 he founded Vivity AI, which raised roughly $8.4M in a round backed by Hanwha Systems, to close the gap between the physical and digital worlds on the factory floor.
Zack Kanter
Zack Kanter is the founder and CEO of Stedi, an API-first, cloud-native healthcare clearinghouse that routes eligibility checks, claims, and electronic payments between providers and insurers. He started his first company at 16, building a bootstrapped auto-parts wholesaler (Proforged) that he ran for roughly 13 years before selling it to Huron Capital. He then spent years wrestling with electronic data interchange (EDI), the arcane plumbing of business-to-business transactions, rewriting Stedi's codebase about eight times before finding extraordinary traction in healthcare. Along the way he became widely read for essays like 'Why Amazon is eating the world.' In March 2026 Stedi raised a $50M Series C led by Addition, bringing total funding to about $142M.
Bryce Jones
Bryce Jones is the CEO and co-founder of Flash Forest, a Toronto-based cleantech startup that uses autonomous drones, AI, GIS mapping and biodegradable seed pods to replant forests faster and more cheaply than traditional hand-planting. A former tree planter and biology graduate from British Columbia, Jones launched Flash Forest in 2019 after seeing how far reforestation methods lagged behind industrial logging technology. The company's stated goal is to plant one billion trees by 2028, with a focus on land that is unsafe or uneconomical for human crews, including post-wildfire terrain.
Caroline Shleifer
Caroline Shleifer is the founder and CEO of RegASK, a Singapore-based regtech company that pairs an AI engine built for regulatory content with a global network of 1,800+ subject matter experts. A pharmacist and scientist by training with a PharmD-PhD in medical physics from the University of Paris V, she spent years leading regulatory and scientific affairs across Asia Pacific at SPRIM before founding RegASK in 2018 to bring regulatory work into the AI era.
Cédric Kovacs-Johnson
Cédric Kovacs-Johnson is the founder and CEO of Flume Health, a New York-based software company that connects the fragmented healthcare data ecosystem so payers and employers can build and run health plans more efficiently. A chemical engineer by training, he first made his name as co-inventor of Spectrom, a full-color 3D printing technology that won the 2014 Collegiate Inventors Competition and was acquired by MakerBot. He founded Flume Health in 2017 and has raised more than $40 million in venture funding, including a $30 million Series A in 2022.
Christian Ferreira
Christian Ferreira is the founder and CEO of Procurement Sciences AI, an AI-native platform built to help businesses find, win, and deliver government contracts. A former U.S. Marine Corps sergeant who deployed to Afghanistan before turning 21, he spent nearly a decade in government contracting - moving from full-stack engineer to senior solutions architect to director of business strategy - before founding the company in 2022 when generative AI matured. In November 2025 the company closed a $30 million Series B, bringing total funding to roughly $40 million, having grown to more than 300 organizations on its platform and enabled billions of dollars in customer contract wins.
Christina Leijonhufvud
Christina Leijonhufvud is the co-founder and CEO of BlueMark, the leading independent provider of impact verification and market intelligence for investors. A veteran of Wall Street, she spent more than 15 years at J.P. Morgan, where in 2007 she created the bank's Social Finance business and helped put impact investing on the map for institutional investors. She later co-founded the impact consulting firm Tideline before launching BlueMark in 2020 to bring third-party verification and benchmarking to a fast-growing industry facing scrutiny over impact-washing.
Christopher King
Christopher King is the founder and CEO of Eaglebrook, a crypto investment platform that gives registered investment advisors (RIAs) direct access to bitcoin and digital assets through tax-optimized separately managed accounts (SMAs). A Penn State finance graduate who began investing in digital assets in 2014, King started his career in crypto-focused venture capital at Morgan Creek Capital Management before launching Eaglebrook in 2019. The New York and Miami-based company has grown into one of the largest crypto SMA platforms serving wealth managers, backed by investors including Castle Island Ventures, Brewer Lane Ventures, and Franklin Templeton.
Colin Perry
Colin Perry is the founder and CEO of Perry Weather, a Dallas-based weather safety platform he started in 2013 after studying meteorology at Texas A&M. What began as a weather consulting firm became a software and hardware company that helps more than 5,000 organizations - including schools, cities, golf courses, and pro leagues like the NFL, MLB, and PGA of America - monitor hazardous conditions, automate their safety policies, and keep compliance records. The company has raised roughly $21 million, including a $15 million Series B in 2024, and has sent more than 200 million weather alerts.
Colton Pace
Colton Pace is the co-founder and CEO of Ownwell, an Austin-based proptech company that helps property owners lower the cost of real estate ownership by appealing over-assessed property taxes. A former asset manager who oversaw billions for wealthy families, Pace built Ownwell in 2020 to give everyday homeowners the same optimization tools that sophisticated investors use. The company has processed more than 1 million appeals, saved customers over $400 million, and raised a $50 million Series B in early 2026.
Conor Sheridan
Conor Sheridan is the founder and CEO of Nory, an AI-native operating system for the hospitality industry. A former quantitative trader and investment strategist, he left finance to build Mad Egg, one of Ireland's fastest-growing fried chicken chains, then created Nory to solve the operational problems he faced running restaurants. Nory now helps operators manage inventory, workforce, payroll, procurement and finance, and raised a $37m Series B in 2025 led by Kinnevik, bringing total funding to roughly $62.6m.
Cristina Vila Vives
Cristina Vila Vives is the founder and CEO of Cledara, a SaaS spend-management platform that gives companies visibility and control over their software subscriptions. After more than a decade running operations teams in the financial industry, she launched Cledara in 2018 to solve a problem she kept seeing firsthand: companies losing money and time to a sprawling, unmanaged stack of software. Cledara now serves over a thousand customers across Europe and the United States, and Forbes has named her among the business leaders changing the world.
Cyrus Karai
Cyrus Karai is the Co-Founder and CEO of CoverForce, a New York-based insurtech building unified API infrastructure that connects insurance carriers, agencies, and wholesalers so commercial insurance can be quoted, paid, bound, and issued in real time. Originally from Australia and a Wharton MBA, he moved from finance roles at BlackRock, Credit Suisse, and PwC into founding CoverForce out of the University of Pennsylvania's Innovation Labs in 2020. Under his leadership the company reached over 9,600 producers nationwide, integrated with major carriers including Travelers, Chubb, Liberty Mutual, and AmTrust, and raised a $13M Series A led by Insight Partners in 2025.
Dan Lievens
Dan Lievens is the CEO and founder of Share One, an Austin-based platform that turns real customers into on-camera storytellers through human-led, verified video testimonials. A serial entrepreneur who has started 11 companies across technology, finance and wellness, he built Philadelphia's first coworking space before turning to the question of how brands earn trust. Share One closed a Series A round in September 2025 to expand its engineering and editing capabilities.
Dana Kim
Dana Kim is the co-founder and CEO of Highlight, a New York-based product intelligence platform that modernizes in-home product testing for consumer brands. A former qualitative market researcher who spent years collecting insights the slow way - standing in stores with paper surveys for brands like Coca-Cola and Nike - she went to Wharton for an MBA, met co-founder Ethan Kellough, and built a technology-driven alternative that pairs a proprietary consumer community with logistics automation and AI analytics. Founded in 2020, Highlight has raised more than $30 million and works with brands including Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Mondelez. Kim has been named to GreenBook's 2022 Future List and Inc.'s 2024 Female Founders 250 list.
Dane Atkinson
Dane Atkinson is a serial entrepreneur who has founded, bought, and sold more than a dozen companies over three decades, almost all aimed at giving small and medium businesses the kind of technology that big chains take for granted. He started his first company at 18, served as the first outside CEO of Squarespace, built the data-analytics firm SumAll (famous for making every employee's salary public), and now runs Odeko, a New York operations platform that handles overnight supply deliveries and back-office software for more than 14,000 independent coffee shops and cafes. He calls his goal 'invisible technology' - software that quietly solves problems so owners can get back to their customers.
Danny Sigurdson
Danny Sigurdson is the founder and CEO of Courier Health, a New York-based technology company that builds a purpose-built patient CRM and experience platform for life sciences companies. After more than a decade in enterprise software - including a role as VP of Sales at ActionIQ and client leadership at Applied Predictive Technologies - he started Courier Health in 2020 to close the gap between specialty medicine approvals and the patients who never start or stay on treatment. The company has raised $70.5M to date, most recently a $50M Series B led by Oak HC/FT.
Danny Tomsett
Danny Tomsett is the founder and CEO of UneeQ, an enterprise AI company that builds lifelike digital humans for customer service, training, and marketing. A New Zealand entrepreneur who started building games at age eight and exited a telecom company at 25, he launched the business in 2009 as the video chat startup FaceMe before pivoting to CGI-driven digital humans. Under his leadership the company delivered high-profile projects like Nadia and Digital Einstein, won Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Business Challenge, and partnered with NVIDIA. He relocated the company's center of gravity to Austin, Texas in 2019.
Daragh Murphy
Daragh Murphy is the Irish-born co-founder and CEO of Imprint, a New York fintech that builds co-branded credit card and loyalty programs for consumer brands like Rakuten, Booking.com, Turkish Airlines and H-E-B. A former corporate lawyer and WeWork operator, he started Imprint in 2020 and grew it to unicorn status, reaching a $1.2 billion valuation in a $150 million Series D in December 2025.
Jon Hawkins
Jon 'Irish' Hawkins is an Australian Defence Force veteran of 25 years, SAS-trained officer, and the founder of Omni Executive - one of Australia's fastest-growing sovereign defence companies. Starting from an idea at his kitchen table in 2012, he built Omni into a 400+ person operation spanning aerospace, consulting, security, maritime and vetting, with around $100 million in annual turnover. A fierce advocate for truly Australian-owned defence capability, he stepped back from the CEO role in February 2026 to serve as Chair of Omni's Board.
Deepak Chhugani
Deepak Chhugani is the founder and CEO of Nuvocargo, an AI-powered platform for cross-border truckload freight between the United States and Mexico. Born in Kenya to Indian parents and raised in Ecuador, he worked on Latin America M&A deals at Bank of America Merrill Lynch before starting Nuvocargo in 2019. The company has raised more than $75 million from investors including Y Combinator, Tiger Global, QED, and NFX, and combines freight forwarding, customs brokerage, cargo insurance, and financing on one platform. Chhugani was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list for enterprise technology in 2023 and is an Endeavor Entrepreneur.
Dennis Thankachan
Dennis Thankachan is the co-founder and CEO of Lightyear, a New York software company that automates how enterprises buy and manage telecom and network services. A former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund investor at PointState Capital, he built a thesis around telecom while investing in the sector, then left finance in 2019 to fix an industry he describes as a multi-trillion-dollar market with almost no happy customers. Under his leadership Lightyear has raised roughly $48.6 million, closed a $31 million Series B led by Altos Ventures in 2024, and serves customers including Palo Alto Networks, Five Guys, Pandora Jewelry, and Teladoc.