Startups You Should Know About: Part 2

Spotlighting My Favorite Startups

One of the best things about the last couple of years has been the opportunity to meet, advise, invest in, and (most importantly) befriend founders of startups.

The startup lifestyle is extremely difficult.

The vast majority of founders have quit their jobs, foregone other lucrative employment options, and generally run around like chickens with their heads cut off looking for some semblance of structure in their day-to-day.

The purpose of this post is to spotlight some of the startups I’m working with and briefly introduce you to their products - some of which you may choose to use yourself!

I also know there’s a lot of college students and recent grads that receive these emails - I’ll attach each company’s job board for your review. I encourage you to reach out to them, or share with a friend that may be interested. I’ll be here to answer questions if you’re curious about any company.

We’ll do 2 or 3 more editions of Startup Spotlights over time - with some very attractive job opportunities. If uninterested in a job change, enjoy checking out the products!

Squiggly (squiggly.school):

Company Purpose

Squiggly is empowering Gen Z & Gen A folks to begin building in the metaverse (yes, Generation A is the one after Generation Z). Through free livestreams and courses, Squiggly is teaching folks of all ages (with youth in focus) how to use applications like VoxEdit to create assets for The Sandbox, Light Tracer to make them look awesome, and Wordpress to launch a portfolio website.

As outlined by Mario Gabrielle in his recent publication Decentraland: The Metaverse’s Early Mover — there’s a lot to be developed within the metaverse. According to Andrew Steinwold, managing partner at a metaverse-focused fund, Decentraland’s biggest weakness is..

Squiggly is solving this problem. Here’s are a few tweets from folks thanking Squiggly for teaching them how to use VoxEdit, create NFTs, and launch a portfolio website.

Founder Background

Ed Radion is a first-gen college student whose family immigrated from Ukraine. He graduated from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce in 2021 and double majored in Political Philosophy, Policy, and Law. While there, he was a teaching assistant, led the Global Markets Group, and the Alternative Investment Fund. He spent his summers in NYC working as an analyst at various investment banks — most recently at Evercore.

Ed’s co-founder, Lukas Houpt, is equally as accomplished. Lukas is currently finishing up his degrees in Statistics and Global Studies at UVA. He brings a unique worldview to Squiggly — having completed both a consulting capstone at Lund University in Sweden and cross-cultural competency program in Costa Rica. As Chief Technical Officer for the company, Lukas has merged his love of statistics with building in the metaverse.

While they’re not hiring just yet — learn about the new internet and how to start building by visiting their homepage.

Quantbase (getquantbase.com):

Company Purpose

This company is so awesome. Quantbase describes themselves as the most innovative robo-advisor around — offering a library of automated investment modules from hedge fund indices, crypto indices, and leveraged stock portfolios, to auto-rebalancing simple 3-fund portfolios, FAANG indices, and a Nancy Pelosi index. The company even recently announced an investable Inverse Jim Cramer Index — which is hilarious.

Quantbase saw a white space within retail investors. Everyday investors already use their traditional brokerage account / robo-advisor to grow wealth slowly over 40+ years. Quantbase is for the 20% of your capital that should be reserved for higher risk, higher upside investments.

A few of my favorite funds they offer are their Nancy Pelosi tracker (+40% CAGR), leveraged all-weather portfolio (+19% CAGR), Quantbase hedge fund index (+15% CAGR), and their crypto blue chip fund (+34% CAGR).

Founder Background

Som Mohapatra puts my college experience to shame. As an Echols Scholar at the University of Virginia, double-majoring in economics & computer science — he took a step back from college to build this winning company. He worked hard for his 3.94 GPA, but viewed building Quantbase as much more worthwhile.

While at Virginia, he’s worked his way up from ‘analyst’ to ‘portfolio manager’ of the school’s McIntire Investment Institute — a long / short equity investment organization with $1M in assets under management.

He’s accompanied by Thomas Stewart, a graduate of the University of Virginia (double-majoring in Mathematics and Economics) with a stint at Princeton University studying Algorithms. Having already had a successful exit under his belt, he’s well-versed in React.js, Node.js, Express.js, and MongoDB.

Thomas’s experiences include: Software Engineer at CoStar Group, AI Developer at Abeyon, and Software Engineer Researcher at the UVA High Energy Physics Lab.

Quantbase is actively hiring — here’s a link to their job board.

Modern Mammals (modernmammals.com)

Company Purpose

Modern Mammals is a shampoo company — sort of. For those of you reading that are a part of the male audience, you might empathize with this problem — you wash your hair with traditional shampoo only for it to feel bone dry and unshapable. Modern Mammals is a shampoo alternative that is formulated with graphite to leave our heads clean and fresh, without being harsh. Think of it as a hair cleanser — not the foamy, counterproductive shampoo that you’re used to.

Here’s an article published by GQ that explains “co-washing” and encourages folks to use Modern Mammals “shampoo” to solve this problem. Here’s another article that includes a lot more backstory on the company.

My favorite part about this company? People I actually know are customers. Over the last 3 months I’ve organically brought up “shampoo brands” in casual conversation with my friends and I’ve counted 6 instances where they mentioned Modern Mammals as their shampoo solution (and alternative) of choice. Very cool.

Founder Background

Joe Moriarty is a graduate from the University of Chicago with a degree in Economics — he took this degree to work on the software side of private equity at Vista Equity Partners for a couple years before running corporate strategy at Box. He then headed back to school to get his MBA at Harvard Business School — while at Harvard he interned at First Round Capital.

Modern Mammals is scaling quickly, especially from a social media perspective. If this is something you’re good at, follow the instructions in this job description.

Influent (influentgen.com)

Company Purpose

Originally describing themselves as the “Glassdoor for Influencers” in this Forbes article, Influent has recently transformed into a home base for creators of all types. Unlike other creator-focused companies who claim to empower creators with tools and resources, the data Influent has collected across 6,000+ creators is free and open to the public from the moment you visit their website.

Influent wants to empower you, not collect your personal data.

Influent is playing both sides of the aisle. For creators, they’re sharing valuable information (pay calculator, brand ratings, etc.) to ensure transparency and informed decision making. For brands, they’re connecting the highest-rated companies with creators in the market for a brand deal. A win-win scenario. Influent will soon turn into a marketplace connecting highly-rated brands with motivated creators.

Founder Background

Julia Montgomery is a graduate from the University of Michigan with a degree in biochemistry — upon graduation she began working at the #1 cardiovascular surgical intensive care unit in the world as a critical care nurse. After becoming inspired by social media, she created Matches Media — a full-service social media marketing and PR firm.

During the pandemic, she began creating content on TikTok geared toward helping other creators go viral. She quickly became an authority in this niche and amassed over 280K followers. Upon more deeply understanding the convergence between social media and consumer-facing products, Julia teamed up with Steph Mui to launch a venture fund whose LPs are strictly creators, founders, or those with an immense understanding of social media.

If you’re a creator yourself, wanting to learn how to start, or just read up on what Influent is up to, consider joining their community here.

Don’t Forget!

If you’re in the market for a new job, consider poking around each company’s job boards. Full transparency, I receive no compensation of any kind if you accept a position at any of these companies - just trying to help founders I believe in build their rockstar teams.

If you want to apply or simply learn more about any of the companies listed here, reply to this email and I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.