Startup Founder/CEO/CTO | Founder Coach | 2x YC | MBA | CS
Thank you Alex for the deeply human, patient and insightful mentoring. You strike deep with your questions and profound in the suggestions. Really, really appreciate it.
I loved chatting with Alex. We discussed strategy, emotional commitment, and go-to-market plans and he gave me the clarity I needed to move forward with more confidence. Truly appreciate his insight and support, thank you Alex!
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My conversation with Alex was incredibly grounding. He helped me zoom out and gain perspective during a chaotic phase in my business. It wasn’t just about tactics ... it was about how I show up as a leader and think long-term. His calm, thoughtful approach really helped me step back and see the bigger picture. Grateful for the insight.
I’m a software engineer turned startup founder with over a decade of experience as CEO and CTO. I’ve gone through YC twice, built teams of over 200, raised millions in venture funding, and navigated the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. Leadership pushes us to our limits, testing our identity and driving us toward a greater purpose. I’ve learned that true leadership isn’t just about guiding others - it’s about embodying authenticity and taking full responsibility for our lives. This presence shapes not just our organizations but every relationship we touch. Through reflection and growth, I’ve realized that while tactical skills matter, cultivating a healthier mindset is the most impactful change we can make. It enhances decision-making, expands capacity, and creates a ripple effect of growth and positive impact around us. If you’re navigating similar challenges and feel isolated, reactive, stuck in decisions, or overwhelmed, let’s chat. If things are going well but you need tactical support, I’m here too.
Support for imposter syndrome through exploring limiting beliefs, fostering self-awareness, and encouraging confidence to help embrace strengths and lead authentically with impact.
I've been a startup founder and CEO/CTO for over 13 years. I've done everything from raising money to hiring people to buying office supplies. At peak, I managed a team of 80 across engineering, product, design and other technology groups.
Mindset coaching grounded in my own journey of discovery, helping leaders uncover what’s holding them back, shift their perspective, and find greater ease, clarity, and resilience to navigate life’s challenges.
Sometimes we just need to be heard by someone that can understand and be with our feelings without trying to fix us. You can rely on me to listen without judgement and only offer advice if you ask for it.
I've used Clickup for pretty much everything from general project management to agile product management. It's perhaps on overpowered tool for many use cases, but I liked having everything in one place as the key tradeoff.
The On Deck Founder Fellowship (ODF) is a ten-week remote program that brings together an incredible group of founders who are in the early stages of building their next startup. We combine the power of community, world-class speakers, and customized support to help you build the next unicorn. On Deck fellows founded 330+ companies and raised over $250m. https://www.beondeck.com/founders
I help seasoned founders to see clearly, break old patterns, and lead with enduring clarity and purpose.
Building the next generation app for real estate discovery (YC S21)
Sentiyen builds GPT-based AI assistants that are trained on your content and enable your audience to get the answers they need 24 hours a day. We allow creators and businesses scale themselves to unlimited 1:1 conversations with potential customers, which helps increase revenue, reduce spend, and improve customer satisfaction. You've invested countless hours into developing your content - now you can unlock even more of its value with AI. We're backed by Y Combinator (S21) and other notable VC's and angel investors.
As the first hire and technical co-founder, I initially focused on building the product and making sure everyone's laptop worked. As the company grew, my responsibilities grew to overseeing development, infrastructure, security, product, design, data and IT. Of course, it was only possible through the support of a strong and talented team to whom I'm forever grateful to in trusting me as I was doing my best to learn my own job as it constantly evolved and felt more challenging with each phase. PeerStreet is a technology platform that democratizes access to real estate debt investments. The company’s unique technology-driven marketplace enables investors to diversify their capital in a fixed-income asset class that had previously been difficult for individuals to access. Loans are sourced from vetted private lenders throughout the United States who often have regional real estate expertise and long-term borrower relationships. PeerStreet enables these lenders to expand their lending capital, empowering them to make more loans, which flows through to borrowers who in turn improve their local communities—one house at a time. As of February 2020, PeerStreet has had over $3.5 billion transacted on its platform. PeerStreet was founded in 2014 and is backed by such renowned venture capitalists as Andreessen Horowitz, World Innovation Lab, Thomvest Ventures and Colchis Capital.
I did some part-time startup consulting and development work while searching for my next project.
At Weilos, we built an online weight loss coaching platform. The company was part of the S13 class at Y Combinator. Acquired by Weight Watchers in 2015.
At Venyooz, we built an online marketplace to help people find and rent spaces for everyday activities (Airbnb for commercial event space). I returned to my web development roots, but this time with Ruby on Rails and a modern stack (Heroku, AWS, so much wow). The key learning here was that business school doesn't teach you how to build startups.
I took a break from web development to work as a game developer at Treyarch (an Activision studio). Contributed to multiple AAA titles, mostly working on gameplay. It's a tough industry, but I had an amazing experience collaborating with incredibly talented artists, designers and developers, and was very fortunate to get to work on some culture defining games. - Ultimate Spider-Man (2005) - Spider-Man 3 (2007) - 007: Quantum of Solace (2008) - Call of Duty: Black Ops (2010) - Call of Duty: Black Ops II (2012)
I held a part-time job throughout college single handedly building and maintaining an e-commerce solution for an LA-based electronic equipment manufacturer. These were the days long before Magento/Shopify/Stripe/etc, so almost everything had to be written from scratch, which was actually fun (if you find payment gateway integrations fun, that is).
My first programming job was an internship at a dotcom startup during my junior year in high school. Though I could not appreciate it at the time, I was getting an inside look at the startup world at the peak of the bubble. I transitioned to a full-time position after graduating just as the market began to unravel and, fortunately, I had managed not to forget to apply to college and left for school at the end of 2000. While the IPO hopes were dashed, the company eventually rebranded to Shopzilla and did quite well when it was sold in 2005.
