About Platform

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The Studio Team

We are passionate about building companies that solve real world problems.

Our Tao

"Tao" means a road, path, way; and hence, the way in which one does something; method, doctrine, principle. Our Tao is a guiding ethos for everything we do at Platform, and is the cultural DNA for every Platform company.

We respect hard work, but we worship results

Working hard is necessary but not sufficient. Don’t confuse working hard with getting results.

Focus

Do a few things well, rather than many things poorly. Spend your time every day doing the things that give you the most leverage to achieve the results you need.

Show decisive pragmatism

Fight for what you believe in, but not everything has to be a fight. Most decisions are reversible. The best decision is a made decision. Analysis paralysis burns time, and time is precious.

Be data-driven

Data doesn’t always tell the whole story, but it tells most of the story, most of the time. Make smart bets. Be intellectually honest.

Build with integrity

Externalities matter. Be mindful of unintended consequences.

Be clear

Err on the side of over-communication. Use Radical Candor – it’s not mean; it’s clear.

Take your work seriously … but not yourself

Building startups is stressful, infuriating, exhausting. Laughter is the best medicine.

Be humble

Be grateful for the huge privilege to work with some of the smartest people from all over the world to build category-defining startups.

Everyone works for the customer

Whatever your role, directly or indirectly, you are in service of the user or customer.

Our Team

Brett Wischow

Chief Growth Officer

Brett is a technology fanatic with over a decade of experience in building go-to-market teams, growth strategies and user-obsessed products. He brings a background in a variety of industries including restaurants, telecom, meetings and events and 3D mapping.

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Brett is driven by lowering the barrier to entrepreneurship, and helping more people find autonomy and ownership in their work. Originally from Virginia, he is particularly interested in expanding tech entrepreneurship beyond Silicon Valley.

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In his spare time, Brett enjoys playing guitar, reading fantasy (send any good suggestions to brett@platformstud.io) and hiking.

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Carol Alexander

Executive Assistant

Carol brings 20 years of C-level executive assistant experience to her role at Platform.

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Past workplaces range from a public policy think tank to one of the world’s leading aluminum manufacturing companies.

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She honed her organization, coordination, and follow-up skills over 19 years on the work-from-home stage, wrangling three sons, juggling a freelance writing gig, and volunteering in her community.

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Her current hobbies include (in no particular order of importance) pickleball, hiking, road trips, and reading.

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Carol refuses to give up on learning to bake artisan bread but currently, she is no good at it — won’t stop, can’t stop.

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Daniel Leal-Bruce

Growth Marketer

Daniel’s love for entrepreneurship began in college at University of Florida, where he transformed a side-hustle selling home-baked cookies into Gainesville’s premier late-night cookie delivery service, Cookiegazm. After selling the cookie business in 2017, Daniel moved to the Washington, DC area, where he joined a then-early stage ISP startup, Starry, and helped grow its DC and NYC markets for the following four years until its IPO in 2022.

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Daniel’s passion for early stage ventures has led to his involvement in industries including hospitality, telecom, and e-commerce.

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Outside of Platform, you’ll find Daniel traveling, dancing salsa and bachata, and playing gigs with his band around some of DC’s hottest music venues.

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Jeremy Burton

Co-Founder & CEO

Jeremy Burton is a 10x serial entrepreneur and has enjoyed building startups for over 30 years. He started his first company at age 14.

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Over his career, Jeremy has worn many different hats, spanning engineering, product design, corporate development, sales, and venture investments.

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Most recently, he co-founded Wonolo, the leading on-demand staffing company, where he served as CTO and board member.

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Jeremy created Platform to encapsulate all his learnings in building startups into a repeatable process to help the next generation of founders succeed.

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His blog - Vibrating Melon - shares some of his learnings.

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Josh Burkwist

VP of Talent

Josh has over 15 years of experience in talent acquisition, both agency and in-house.

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He was the first person to score 100% on the LinkedIn Recruiter algorithm that tracks user effectiveness, leading the LinkedIn Recruiter Product Team to consult with him.

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At the unicorn, Wonolo, he grew the engineering, product, and design teams by 3x, which included the first 19 hires in Canada.

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Prior to recruiting, Josh worked in Child Protection as a forensic interviewer.

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Josh grew up in Alaska and NEEDS the outdoors.

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Lissette Arias

Partner & Chief Design Officer

Lissette is an optimistic and passionate design leader, systems thinker, and design thinking evangelist with over fifteen years of experience owning creative vision, strategy, and execution of B2B and B2C omni-channel solutions, from concept to launch.

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She is a serial builder and has created delightful and meaningful digital experiences for some of the world’s most popular brands with millions of users, setting industry standards that stand the test of time.

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Challenging the status quo comes naturally to her, and promoting equity, inclusivity, and diversity is always top of mind. She’s a rebel with a (social) cause, because at times, that is exactly what it takes.

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Luciano Giannini

Software Engineer

Luciano is a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame where he studied Computer Engineering and Computer Science. A true customer-obsessed engineer, Luciano gets no greater satisfaction than helping users solve problems with his feats of engineering.In his free time, you'll find Luciano spending time in the gym, at the theater, or discussing current events with friends.

Patrick O'Shea

Software Engineer

Patrick is an experienced builder with a lifelong love of learning and a passion for problem solving. He also has an affinity for data, endlessly interested in both manipulating and analyzing it.

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He is constantly seeking new and efficient ways to build as a software engineer, and grow his skill set.

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Patrick also has a love of music, inspiring many passion projects involving it.

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When he’s not developing, he enjoys spending time with friends and enjoying life’s little pleasures.

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Tim Connors

Co-Founder & Founding Investor

Tim Connors is Founder and Managing Partner at PivotNorth Capital, an early-stage software-focused venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, CA. Tim has co-founded six companies, coached founders to produce $30B+ in market cap, and been part of 6 unicorns.

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Tim has engineering degrees from Notre Dame and Stanford, and an MBA from Harvard. Tim was named to the 2022 & 2020 Midas Lists of the top 100 VCs in the world.

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Tim loves to be the first investor in a company and serve as founder coach from day 1 to help founders build solutions that wow customers and to build businesses that have compelling unit economics and enduring value.

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Our Founders

Anthony Whitaker

Founder Associate, MOGL

Anthony is an Old Dominion University Alum and served in a number of roles at the University: he was President of the ODU initiative, Brother 2 Brother, a Recruiter and Assistant Running Back Coach for ODU Football, and worked as an entrepreneurial consultant.

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As an entrepreneur, Anthony created Unparalleled Co., an Athleisure Clothing Company made to inspire.

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He also assisted QuestStone, where he worked with startups, high-profile companies, and individuals, nationally and internationally, to establish them in the digital space.

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Ayden Syal

CEO & Co-Founder, MOGL

Ayden graduated from the University of Notre Dame with degrees in Management Consulting and Sociology. Ayden has spent his career working in a variety of roles across financial services at Morgan Stanley, Lexington Partners, and IHS Markit. Ayden serves on the Notre Dame Young Alumni Board as the East Regional Director.

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Ayden is looking forward to helping athletes and local businesses maximize their brand potential. He is excited about using MOGL to improve the health of communities and the lives of current and former collegiate athletes.

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Brandon Wimbush

Chief Athletic Officer & Co-Founder, MOGL

Brandon graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a degree in Accountancy. Prior to earning the starting quarterback position for Notre Dame, Brandon was a NJ Gatorade Player of the Year and state champion. While at Notre Dame, Brandon started 16 games for the Irish and led them to a 10-3 record in 2017 before concluding his collegiate career at the University of Central Florida.

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Brandon is ecstatic about using his experiences both on and off the playing field to improve the lives of generations to follow. He aspires to use MOGL to allow him to give back to the institutions and communities that have given him so much.

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Derek Snook

CEO & Co-Founder, CoLife

After playing basketball at Furman University, Derek spent four months teaching at a school for orphans in a fishing village of Kenya, where he noticed a disconnect between those who want to help and those they are trying to help. Upon returning to Charleston he voluntarily decided to live among the homeless for a year (the background for his first book).

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Through the experience he noticed that many of the men he lived with worked day labor, and so he decided to work day labor himself. He saw that while many simply wanted to get their wages for the night, others were sincerely trying to get ahead. Soon after he started In Every Story, which placed as many as 170 employees on a daily basis at 35% + higher wages than competitors.

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Derek has a curiosity and thirst for life, having lived on a sailboat in New York City, visited more than fifty countries, and driven a car from Mongolia to London (the background for his second book). He also has blogged for The Huffington Post, has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and has given a TEDx talk.

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Eri O'Diah

CEO & Co-Founder, SIID Technologies

Eri is a seasoned, creative strategist who is applying her experience at the point where Black, immigrant, millennial, female intersect to find ways to deconstruct biased systems and advocate for equitable social outcomes. Her current priority is the study of biased decision-making within the criminal justice space and how deep learning and emerging technologies can be used to better understand and accelerate the deconstruction of cognitive bias and reduce its impact on marginalized groups.

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Career highlights include more than 10 years in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. Eri is a 2019 Minnesota Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Woman of the Year Nominee, and the National Association of Women Business Owners - Minnesota Chapter’s 2020 Emerging Business Owner Awardee.

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Eri graduated from California State University Northridge with a BA in Electronic Media Management. In her free time, she can be found in a yoga class or volunteering with organizations like BDPA, a national nonprofit focused on nurturing and inspiring diverse K12 students and professionals to pursue a future in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Griffin Eaton

CEO & Co-Founder, Juke

There’s an old joke: what do you call someone who puts $5,000 worth of gear into a $500 car to drive 100 miles to a $50 gig?….a Musician.

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Live music is one of the most enjoyable parts of the human experience. A vibrant music scene can turn a city from downtrodden to vibrant. And yet, the majority of musicians struggle to earn a livable wage. Grif invites you to follow Juke as we help musicians monetize their talents, and have a lot of fun along the way.

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Grif transitioned his career from the corporate world to tech startups and hasn’t looked back. His time in marketing at Anheuser-Busch ignited his passion for understanding the customer; but it was his time in tech that provided the expertise to create and articulate value to customers. Grif earned his BS and MBA at Notre Dame.

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Iesha Magallanes

Founder Associate, Ethically

Iesha is a designer, engineer and artist. Despite only recently graduating from the University of Notre Dame, she already has experience on the creative teams for Playstation, Estee Lauder, and Brokeandboard.

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Her love for design, impact, and building came together in her previous role where she served as the co-founder for a FinTech app named Debtly where she was the original UI/UX designer and front end developer of the app. Debtly was created to teach financial literacy to low income minorities and help with the implementation of wealth building for disenfranchised groups.

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As Platform’s first Founder Associate, Iesha will work closely with Jada to build and grow Ethically, getting her hands dirty with everything from talking to users to programming.

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Jada McLean

CEO & Co-Founder, Ethically

A recovering investment banker turned social impact entrepreneur, Jada previously founded Hurry Home, a fintech startup that enabled homeownership through an innovative rent to buy model. Jada has been recognized for Hurry Home’s innovative approach to filling in the gap of financing for small-dollar properties by renowned institutions like Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Techstars, and Village Capital.

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Prior to founding Hurry Home she was an investment banker at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Mccoll Partners (acquired by Deloitte Corporate Finance) where she focused on advising companies through mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.

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She holds a BSE in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Duke University.

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Molly Hanten

CEO & Co-Founder, PartyPlease

Parties are some of our most precious memories and celebrations, yet the growing demands of daily life make planning and executing these events an added stressor on our to-do list. Molly fell in love with the problem as an entrepreneur who planned endless parties and events for her previous businesses as well as a lover of getting friends and family together without any excuse for a party.

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With over ten years as an entrepreneur, Molly planned community events, grand openings, and parties worldwide for hundreds of thousands of people, seeing first-hand the work, time, and dedication needed to plan and execute significant events and parties. With experience in building marketplaces, leading global teams, and building communities, she's thrilled to bring the joy of parties, without the stress, to the masses.

Rilwan Lawal

CEO & Co-Founder, GigEasy

After starting multiple ventures in high school & college, Rilwan worked in the Aerospace industry before co-founding Neu, a Techstars-backed marketplace connecting Airbnb homeowners with cleaning companies.

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He was also an early employee at Hugo, a startup building "Uber for school buses". This led him to focus on solving problems for Gig workers.

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Most recently Rilwan worked as a Corporate Innovation consultant, leading design-thinking initiatives for Global 100 companies.

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Outside of work, Rilwan enjoys reading & traveling. He is also a Chelsea FC fan and plays soccer for fun.

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Saurabh Jaiswal (Jas)

CEO & Co-Founder, SmartHaul

For the past 15 years, Jas has targeted Operations and Strategy, spanning healthcare, financial services, SaaS, and supply chain logistics across fortune 500 & prominent startups such as DaVita, Deloitte, and Gusto.

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From building the first ever prototype for wireless seizure detection system to a $1B Home Dialysis vertical, he is driven to find customer-centric models that go against the norm. The wide spectrum of his work provides a deep understanding of the raw composition for successful, mission-driven organizations.

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He earned his Electrical Engineering and MBA at Purdue. Outside of work, Jas is either busy planning the “next trip” or training for Spartan races.