Robots, RevOps, and the founder of Rubrik

Our October 15th showcase lineup revealed + the winner of our croissant crossword challenge 👀

Our Founders You Should Know Startup Showcase is NEXT WEEK. We can’t wait to introduce you to 10 breakout founders pushing the boundaries in AI, robotics, consumer tech, and beyond.

If you haven’t reserved your seat yet, RSVP NOW — seats are filling up fast.

Next week, we’re proud to feature the following startups and founders:

1. Justin Lopas, founder of Base Power

2. Quinten Farmer, founder of Portola

3. Lindon Gao, founder of Dyna Robotics

4. Jeffrey Wang, founder of Exa

5. Nicolas Kopp, founder of Rillet

6. Ari Malik, founder of Salient

7. Jeremy Gurewitz, founder of Solace Health

8. Shriram Sridharan, founder of Rox

9. Soham Mazumdar, founder of Wisdom AI

10. Celeste Amadon, founder of Known

Last week, we introduced the first five startups on our list (along with some of the buzz they’ve been generating on social media). Today, we’re spotlighting the remaining five.

Ari Malik, founder of Salient

Like many great startups, Salient started as a side project. During his time on Tesla’s finance team, Ari Malik quickly realized how expensive it is to manage loans given to customers, even if they have great credit scores and low default risk. You can guess what question followed — “what if this process could be automated?”.

Two years later, Salient is a booming loan servicing platform: they help businesses that give out loans manage the steps that happens after a customer borrows money. Salient’s AI agents cover everything from reminding customers of loan payments to detecting real-time compliance violations.

The team recently raised a 60M Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz and is rapidly hiring talented engineers to meet inbound demand.

Jeremy Gurewitz, founder of Solace Health

Solace health is a deeply personal endeavor for founder Jeremy Gurewitz — in 2016, his mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Despite being engrained in the healthcare system as a radiologist, his mother found the complexity of the healthcare process incredibly overwhelming. Jeremy recognized her experience would be much easier if his mother had a healthcare professional to guide and advocate on her behalf.

This motivation led to Solace Health, a platform that connects patients with medical advocates who help navigate the complex U.S. healthcare system. Advocates help with all things healthcare: scheduling appointments, understanding diagnoses, managing chronic illnesses, etc. Best of all, it’s covered by Medicare and select private insurance carriers.

The team recently raised a 60M Series B led by Menlo Ventures and is hiring across the board to expand patient access to advocate assistance.

Shriram Sridharan, founder of Rox

Rox is the single source of truth for enterprise sales teams. Rox’s Agent Swarm, a fleet of agents assigned to each customer account, researches, engages, and monitors customers, empowering sales reps to work smarter.

By automating repetitive tasks, Rox frees reps to focus on high-value client interactions. Customers like Ramp, OpenAI, and NVIDIA have seen productivity rise by up to 50% and their sales pipeline double.

Shriram Sridharan is no stranger to building and scaling software infra tools; as a Senior Engineering Manager at Confluent, he led the team that made Apache Kafka the fastest and most cost efficient cloud native service for customers.

With $50M raised from investors including Sequoia and General Catalyst, Rox is transforming enterprise sales. Meet Shriram next Wednesday to hear why Ramp’s VP of Sales says: “There will be a revolt if we try to take Rox away.”

Soham Mazumdar, founder of Wisdom AI

For Soham Mazumdar, building and scaling one successful startup isn’t enough. As Co-founder and former Chief Architect at Rubrik, he led the company from zero to IPO over nine years. Now, he’s embarking on his next success story.

Wisdom lets you surface data insights by asking questions in plain English. Gone are the days of extreme table filtering and complex Excel formulas you frequently ask ChatGPT for. Wisdom connects to your data sources, monitors your key business metrics, answers your questions, and delivers actionable alerts, all in one place.

The team raised a $23M seed round led by Coatue earlier this year, and are looking for fantastic engineers to join their team.

Celeste Amadon, founder of Known

Dating in San Francisco these days seems to revolve around run clubs and coffee chats. Celeste Amadon wants to change that. Her startup, Known, is an anti-swipe dating platform that brings back human connection. You take a quick call, share what you’re looking for, and Known’s AI does the rest.

The platform has exploded in popularity thanks to Celeste’s sharp social media instincts and a string of viral Bay Area events. If you’ve spent any time in San Francisco, you’ve probably seen their flyers on telephone poles and bus stops. And it’s working — thousands of people in SF have gone on dates through Known, and they’re happy to pay for it because of the real value it delivers beyond free dating platforms. Users spend an average of 25 minutes talking to Known’s AI, a rare feat in consumer tech.

Thousands of people in SF have gone on dates through Known, and are paying because the platform provides that much more value over free apps like Tinder and Hinge.

They’re hiring engineers to take on one of the hardest problems in consumer tech: translating messy, human preferences into meaningful matches using data, AI, and design.

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We only have a few spots left for our October 15th showcase. If you’re jobseeking or exploring what’s out there, RSVP NOW to meet these founders in person and find your next career-defining opportunity.

🥐 P.S. We announced our showcase crossword winner last week on LinkedIn. See who won here!