Every one has left their last job and is building full time. None has raised an institutional round. 5 in commerce & distribution, 4 in healthcare, 2 in financial services, 2 in gov / security / trust. Below the top list, 31 more we rate lower but tracked anyway.
We read the 45 portfolio companies and the founders behind twelve of them. The pattern that repeats is a repeat founder or senior startup operator, seven to ten years in, who pairs with a big-tech or ex-IDF engineer. No CEO in your portfolio came from a famous hypergrowth logo. They come from Series B to D companies: Enigma, EverString, Tidelift, Grindr, BARK, Jobox, Medumo. We screened for that, not for brand names.
On what they're building: most of these are genuinely dark. Databases will show a description for a stealth company, but it is generated from the founder's previous company and it is wrong. We only state a direction where the founder said it themselves or we found it independently. Where it says dark, it is dark.
Ten and a half years at DoorDash, ending as Head of In Store. Before that Group PM and Head of Merchant Logistics.
SignalDark. No domain, no description, one person on the record. Left in January and the stealth company starts the same month. Nothing raised. Of everyone here this is the best combination of timing and fit.
Co-founded Octaura, the Citi-backed electronic trading venue for syndicated loans and CLOs. Before that ran Markets Strategic Investments at Citi for five years. Board seats at Trumid, Genesis Global, Arteria AI. Princeton.
SignalHeadline reads “Founder and CEO at Stealth Startup.” Direction stated as fintech for credit markets — consistent with Octaura and her Citi years. The only candidate whose stealth description is real signal rather than a database artifact.
Ten years of supply-chain and operations software: Director of Product at Resilinc for six years, Product Lead at Flexport, Principal PM at Gusto. Co-founded Eon Info Solutions before that.
SignalSays it in his own headline: building an AI operating system for construction. Sector public, product dark. Full time since March 2025.
Founding engineer at Vori (grocery software) and senior engineer at Instacart.
SignalNot dark — rapide.io is live: agentic AI running the retail back office, cost, pricing, ordering, inventory and receiving, for grocery and multi-vendor retail. No round on record, but there is a login and an outbound sales motion running. If you want this one, the window is closing.
Founded Medsaf and ran it eight years — venture-backed pharmaceutical supply chain fighting counterfeit drugs and hospital procurement. Then Director of Product Management at Pfizer.
SignalCEO of a stealth company since April 2026. Headline states the domain: supply-chain infrastructure in complex markets. One check needed — her Pfizer record carries a future end date, so confirm she is fully out.
Senior Engineering Manager on AWS Control Tower at Amazon, and before that Managing Director at Deloitte. Also ran AWS solutions architecture for financial services and professional services at Check Point.
SignalHeadline says he is building something new in cloud security. Nothing raised, three months out — the earliest catchable person on this list. Worth testing whether the wedge is compliance for regulated customers or generic security tooling.
VP and Head of Clinical Data Science at Prolaio (AI cardiac care). Google Health AI resident. Stanford PhD, Edinburgh MBChB.
SignalHeadline is unambiguous: “Health x AI Founder.” Clinical AI in regulated care. Product dark. Needs a commercial co-founder — he has never held a P&L role.
VP of Data, AI and Robotics Platforms at Moderna. General Manager of AWS Supply Chain at Amazon, after six years running Amazon grocery supply-chain technology.
SignalDark, unfunded, five months out. Pharma manufacturing plus supply chain is the regulated-physical-industry pattern almost exactly. One thing to ask: four roles in two years, and an earlier founding attempt he abandoned inside twelve months.
Co-founder and COO of Vectrix (YC S20), acquired by Cloudflare in 2022. Stayed four years at Cloudflare on product. Security background at Autodesk and PlanGrid.
SignalHeadline says “Stealth AI Startup.” Direction is data security and AI. Clean break in May 2026 — the post-acquisition tenure ended and the stealth record started the same month.
Founded Antidote (formerly TrialReach) and ran it a decade — clinical-trial matching, venture-backed. Co-founded Kelkoo, sold to Yahoo for about €475M. Later VP Digital Strategy and M&A at IQVIA.
SignalFounding again as of January 2026, not advising — we checked, the “advisor” in his headline is historical. Product dark. The risk here is the reverse of usual: with a Kelkoo exit behind him he may not want a first check.
Senior Staff Engineer at Instacart, marketplace engineering at Lyft, VP at Morgan Stanley. Co-founded and was President of Highstock.
SignalDark. Headline is “Building something new.” Highstock ran fifteen months and ended July 2025 — worth asking how it ended before the meeting.
Director of Engineering at Credit Karma. Before that co-founder and CTO of SeedFi, consumer lending, venture-backed.
SignalTwo overlapping records, almost certainly one company. Direction is browser-task automation, which is horizontal — the regulated-fintech engineering record is the reason he is on this list, not the current product. He is CTO, so someone else is CEO.
SVP and General Manager at hims & hers, running a telehealth P&L. Five years as a GM at Uber, Senior Director at Spotify. West Point, HBS, US Army Cavalry captain.
SignalCo-founder and CEO of a company called Vael since January 2026. We could not confirm what Vael is — the one domain that matches does not name him. Strong operator, unconfirmed company.
| Founder | Sector | Where | Before |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nitin Rao | Energy & industrials | San Francisco | Built Cloudflare's global network — SVP Global Infrastructure for ten years, then interim Chief Product Officer. Stealth record is one month old and completely dark. Pedigree this strong usually skips a small first check. |
| Tommy Peeples | Financial services | Brooklyn | Co-founded Plover Parametrics (YC W22), parametric climate-risk insurance. Deployment Strategist at Palantir for four and a half years. Now building Postal, an AI digital mailbox. It is live with about fifteen people, so past the first-check moment. The insurtech background is the on-thesis part. |
| Andres Velasquez | Financial services | New York | Head of Product at RobinFood, LatAm delivery. Product and ops at Tributi, Colombian tax filing. Co-founder of Atina, “AI agents that show up in your P&L.” Right shape, but six years in and no verifiable company footprint yet. |
| John Slump | Healthcare | Chicago | Co-founded FARAPULSE, acquired by Boston Scientific for around $295M. CFO at two more companies that sold to Integra and J&J. Three exits, but this is implantable medtech and he is still CEO of Atraverse Medical. Not full time on the new company. |
| Andrew Ullmann | Commerce & distribution | San Francisco | Head of Dasher Experience Support at DoorDash through the IPO. Product leadership at Stellic, Fora and SFR3. Left both roles in April 2026, so the timing is right. His headline claims two prior companies that do not appear anywhere in his record — ask about that first. |
| Umberto Javarone | Transportation | Milan | General Manager Italy at FreeNow. Ran urban mobility for Europcar. Four years at Apple. Real operator, wrong geography for a US first check, and he has a second venture running in parallel. |
| Keshav Sivakumar | Commerce & distribution | London | Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir. Co-founder and CTO of Lumitics, IoT food-waste hardware for commercial kitchens. No headline, no signal, and a seventeen-month gap. Nothing to pitch yet. |
| Miles Hobby | Healthcare | San Francisco | VP of Product at Payscale after they bought Agora, the company he co-founded and ran. Genuinely out of Nervana, the company he co-founded most recently, which is still operating without him. Ask what happened. |
| Val Miftakhov | Energy & industrials | San Carlos | Founded ZeroAvia (hydrogen aviation) and eMotorWerks, sold to Enel. Left the ZeroAvia CEO seat in May 2026, still on the board. Raised $339M at ZeroAvia. Whatever he builds next will not be a $1M first check. |
| John Hohm | Energy & industrials | New York | Senior Software Engineer at Fulcrum |
| Manav Khandelwal | Healthcare | New York | Product at Stripe |
| Charles Neugebauer | Energy & industrials | Los Altos | CEO/Founder at Leafburst, Inc. |
| Brian Conyer | Healthcare | Brooklyn | Chief Commercial Officer at CareValidate |
| Josiah Parappally | Financial services | New York | Staff Software Engineer at Ramp |
| Rui Aguiar | Commerce & distribution | Alto | investor/advisor at various startups |
| Chris Conley | Financial services | Boston | Software Engineer at Stripe |
| Ruhul Amin Obe | Financial services | London | Co-Founder at Onfido |
| Jay Shek | Healthcare | New York | VP, Consumer Product at Hone Health |
| Mai Huong Tran | Commerce & distribution | New York | Head of Enterprise Strategic Partnership at CharityRx |
| Yvonne Chen | Gov / security / trust | San Francisco | Product Lead, Builder in Residence at Neo |
| Michael Lee | Financial services | San Mateo | Product Lead at Stripe |
| Shirley Zhang | Healthcare | New York | Head of Ops & Special Projects at Create Wellness |
| Mary Stasinopoulos | Healthcare | New York | Head of Commercial Insights at Seed Health |
| Djordje Milosevic | Financial services | Belgrade | Director of Product, Treasury & Finance at Aspire |
| Rishi Penmetcha | Energy & industrials | New York | Engineering at Traba |
| Shahar Peleg | Energy & industrials | York | Director, ThinQ Energy and Commercial Energy Business - Product and Program Management at LG Electronics North America |
| Jon Goldsmith | Commerce & distribution | San Francisco | Founder at Tetra (YC W17) |
| Ned Scher | Financial services | San Francisco | Senior Manager, New Business Development at DoorDash |
| Joachim Valente | Gov / security / trust | San Francisco | Head of Security Intelligence at Neon |
| Siqi Shi, Mba, Ms, Pmp | Energy & industrials | New York | Product Management Director at Zuora |
| Max Tabachnik | Healthcare | New York | Staff Product Manager at Tomorrow Health |