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.
Repeat founders and senior startup operators, roughly seven to ten years in, usually the kind who pair with a strong technical co-founder. We weighted operators who came up through Series B to D companies over people with famous logos on the CV, and we kept to foundational industries: healthcare, financial services, energy, and the infrastructure under everyday life.
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.
SignalWas dark; his own page now points somewhere. He writes about building where software meets the real world, from an operations background, running experiments that don't scale to derisk fast. Against ten years at DoorDash ending as Head of In Store, that reads as software for physical retail or last-mile operations. Still no company name or domain, but no longer a blank.
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.
SignalNow named. Her profile describes SPRINT, Spread Products Investment Technologies, a firm that invests in and incubates fintech for credit markets. A straight line from Octaura and her Citi credit years. The clearest of the thirteen: a stated company and model, not a database guess.
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.
SignalNo longer dark. He states the product: an AI-native platform that turns days of preconstruction work into hours for contractors, covering drawing ingestion, symbol extraction, bill of quantities, and compliance checks. Preconstruction still runs on PDFs and tribal knowledge, and he is replacing that. Full time since early 2025.
Founding engineer at Vori (grocery software) and senior engineer at Instacart.
SignalNot dark. Founder and CEO of Rapide (rapide.io): agentic AI running the retail back office, cost, pricing, ordering, inventory and receiving, for grocery and multi-vendor retail. Live product with a login and an outbound sales motion, no round on record. 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.
SignalConfirmed and stated. Her headline reads Building Supply Chain Infrastructure in Complex Markets, consistent with the pharma supply chain she built at Medsaf on about $5M raised. Direction is clear. The one open item is her Pfizer record's 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.
SignalSharper now. His page says he is building a new AI-native approach to cloud security, narrower than generic security tooling. Straight out of running AWS Control Tower. Three months out, nothing raised, the earliest catchable person here.
VP and Head of Clinical Data Science at Prolaio (AI cardiac care). Google Health AI resident. Stanford PhD, Edinburgh MBChB.
SignalDirection is now explicit. He describes healthcare that is continuously learning, deeply personalized, and accessible at scale: multimodal clinical AI that turns complex health data into tools clinicians trust. The product is still unnamed. Needs a commercial co-founder, having never held a P&L.
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.
SignalPartly lifted. His page reads as a broad executive bio, AI, data and automation at scale, which confirms the AI-plus-supply-chain lane but not a product. Pharma manufacturing plus supply chain still fits the regulated-physical pattern. Ask about four roles in two years and the earlier founding attempt he left 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.
SignalStill dark on the product. His page adds only 'no better time to build something new' over the Stealth AI, YC, ex-Cloudflare headline. The direction stays data security and AI, with a clean break in May 2026. Worth a call for the operator, not for a stated product.
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.
SignalA shade clearer. His headline now names the lane, digital health and clinical trials, matching the decade he ran Antidote. The product is still dark. The real risk is unchanged: 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.
SignalStill dark. His page says only 'building something new,' no more than the headline. The marketplace-engineering record at Instacart and Lyft is the reason he is here. Highstock ran fifteen months and ended July 2025, worth asking how before the meeting.
Director of Engineering at Credit Karma. Before that co-founder and CTO of SeedFi, consumer lending, venture-backed.
SignalLittle added. His page confirms the CTO role and the SeedFi exit but states no product. The direction still reads as browser-task automation, which is horizontal; the regulated-fintech engineering record is why he is on the list. 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.
SignalStill unconfirmed. His page is a broad hyper-growth-operator bio under a bare 'Founder' headline, with no mention of Vael or what it does. A strong operator out of hims & hers and Uber, but the company is a name without a product we can verify.
| 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 |