The Google Mafia

ivelina

Published

October 10, 2024

Company "mafias" are all the rage, and we here at PIN love to dig deep into the most influential 'Tech Mafias,' especially since we're huge on democratizing access to startup investing by supporting communities with all the legal and bureaucratic work when it comes to setting up a community investment club.

This week cover the Google Mafia, and as is to be expected, it is THE biggest tech mafia group we have covered so far. In fact, there's so many companies founded by former employees of Google that we couldn't possibly include all of them.

In total, there are more than 2,300 companies founded and $98.2 billion in funding raised. We decided to divide the companies into three sections below: The Brightest Stars (companies with the most funding raised), Glowing Stars (companies who've raised between $15M to $$95M), and Rising Stars (Seed stage companies).

If you missed our previous posts, make sure to check the Twitter Mafia, Lyft Mafia, Stripe Mafia, Netflix Mafia, InstaCart Mafia, Dropbox Mafia, Revolut Mafia,Tesla Mafia,Square Mafia, Reddit Mafia, VMware Mafia, Amazon Mafia, SpaceX, Slack Mafia and OpenAI articles. Investing in fellow coworkers' startups, especially as a community or alumni group, is one of the best ways to get in early on deals as well as support the ideas and ventures of people you love and admire. Who knows what's around the corner in your own network and community!

Companies Covered:

Horizon Robotics
Anthropic
ClearMotion
Nuro
Livspace
Magic Eden
Snorkel AI
Lever
Sense
Workrise
FIGUR8
Bobbie
Noom
Rallyware
Odys Aviation
Modsy
PolyAI
BigHat Biosciences
Reliable Robotics
Fairbanc
Waitwhile
Veritone
Modern Fertility
Comma AI
BorderX Lab
Group Commerce
Getaround
QCraft
Paystand
Lucid Green
BitGo
ImageShack
Xperiel
Audioshake
SPATE
Crowd AI
Plai
Glide

The Brightest Stars

Horizon Robotics

Founder: Annie Feiwen Tao
Google Role: Business Analyst
Capital Raised: $2.2B
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Stage: Series C

Annie is the co-founder and vice president of operations at Horizon Robotics. Annie is an accomplished business leader in top technology companies in both US and China with an advanced level of expertise in marketing, strategy and business development.

Anthropic

Founder: Dario Amodei
Google Role: Senior Research Scientist
Capital Raised: $1.3B
Investors: Spark Capital
Stage: Series B

Dario is CEO and co-founder at Anthropic. Anthropic is an AI safety and research company working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

ClearMotion

Founder: Zack Anderson
Google Role: Software Intern
Capital Raised: $317.8M
Investors: NEA
Stage: Series D

Zack is the founder and CTO at ClearMotion, an automotive growth tech company on a mission to transform the quality of time we spend in motion—by making transportation more productive, comfortable, fun, and safe.

Nuro

Founders: Dave Ferguson, Jiajun Zhu
Google Roles: Principal Engineer, Computer Vision and Machine Learning Lead
Capital Raised: $2.1B
Investors: Tiger Global
Stage: Series D

Nuro develops and operates a fleet of electric self-driving vehicles that are built to deliver assorted local goods.

Livspace

Founder: Anuj Srivastava
Google Role: Global Head of Product Marketing & Growth
Capital Raised: $431.6M
Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners
Stage: Series F

Livspace is a home interiors and improvement renovation company that connects people to designers, services, and products.

Magic Eden

Founder: Jack Lu
Google Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $170M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Series B

Jack is the CEO & co-founder at Magic Eden which is building the leading destination for NFT discovery, ownership and expression.

Snorkel AI

Founder: Braden Hancock
Google Role: Google Search
Capital Raised: $135.3M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Series C

Braden is the co-founder and Head of Technology at Snorkel AI. Snorkel AI is a technology startup that empowers data scientists and developers to turn data into accurate and adaptable AI applications fast.

Noom

Founder: Artem Petakov
Google Role: Software Engineer / Tech Lead
Capital Raised: $657.3M
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Stage: Series F

Artem is the co-founder at Noom. Noom is the world's leading behavior change company, disrupting the weight loss and healthcare industries. By combining the power of artificial intelligence, mobile tech, and psychology, Noom helps people live healthier lives by changing their long-term habits.

Lever

Founder: Nate Smith
Google Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $122.8M
Investors: Index Ventures
Stage: Series D

Nate is the co-founder of Lever, a leading talent acquisition suite with over 5000 customers.

Workrise

Founder: Sandeep Jain
Google Role: Staff Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $752.5M
Investors: Founders Fund
Stage: Series E

Sandeep is the founder of EnergyRep. Sandeep is building EnergyRep and investing in Climate Tech startups.

Veritone

Founder: Chad Steelberg, Ryan Steelberg
Google Role: General Manager, Head of Radio
Capital Raised: $388.9M
Investors: Acacia Research
Stage: Public

Veritone is a leading provider of artificial intelligence technology and solutions.

Getaround

Founder: Elliot Kroo
Google Role: Software Engineering Intern
Capital Raised: $948.7M
Investors: Redpoint
Stage: Public

Elliot is the founder and CTO at Getaround, the world's leading connected carsharing platform, on a mission toward empowering people to carshare everywhere.

Reliable Robotics

Founder: Robert Rose
Google Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $133.5M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Series C

Robert is the CEO at Reliable Robotics, which is focused on advanced automation that will make aircrafts safer, more available, more affordable and fundamentally transformative to the way goods and people move around the planet.

Glowing Stars

Sense

Founder: Alex Rosen
Google Role: Product Specialist, Google Apps Deployment
Capital Raised: $89.5M
Investors: Accel
Stage: Series D

Alex is the co-founder at Sense. Modern enterprise recruiting teams are powered by Sense’s automated communication and talent engagement technology.

FIGUR8

Founder: Nan-Wei Gong
Google Role: Research Development Lead
Capital Raised: $16.5M
Investors: Phoenix Venture Partners
Stage: Series A

Nan-Wei Gong is the CEO at FIGUR8. FIGUR8 is an MIT spin-off company, creating the most advanced wearable musculoskeletal (MSK) technology on the market.

Bobbie

Founder: Laura Modi
Google Role: Google Finance
Capital Raised: $21.5M
Investors: Bolt
Stage: Series A

Laura is the CEO & co-founder of Bobbie, the first European-style organic infant formula that meets FDA standards. Founded by moms in the U.S.

Rallyware

Founder: Mykhaylo Kostandov
Google Role: Software Engineering Intern
Capital Raised: $24.7M
Investors: Techstars
Stage: Seed

Mykhaylo is the co-founder and CTO at Rallyware, an innovative enterprise SaaS performance enablement platform for scalable workforce engagement.

Odys Aviation

Founder: James Dorris
Google Role: Electro Mechanical Engineer
Capital Raised: $15.9M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed

Odys Aviation is an aircraft startup making hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft for regional mobility.

Modsy

Founder: Shanna Tellerman
Google Role: Partner
Capital Raised: $72.7M
Investors: TCV
Stage: Series C

As the founder and CEO of Modsy, Shanna transformed the industry of 3D interior design by launching transformative visualization technology and online design services.

PolyAI

Founder: Tsung-Hsien Wen
Google Role: Researcher
Capital Raised: $66M
Investors: Khosla Ventures
Stage: Series D

Tsung-Hsien Wen is a co-founder and CTO of PolyAI, a London-based startup looking to use the latest developments in NLP and ML to create a general platform for deploying spoken dialogue systems.

BigHat Biosciences

Founder: Mark DePristo
Google Role: Head of Genomics team
Capital Raised: $99.3M
Investors: a16z
Stage: Series B

Mark DePristo is co-founder and CEO of BigHat Biosciences, an early-stage Bay Area startup developing an AI-first experimental platform to radically reduce the difficulty of designing antibodies and other therapeutic proteins.

Fairbanc

Founder: Mir Haque
Google Role: M&A Strategy Consulting
Capital Raised: $24.9M
Investors: 500 Global
Stage: Seed

Mir Haque is a financial Inclusion evangelist for the unbanked and the founder of Fairbanc, the first scalable, AI-powered working capital credit and payments platform for emerging market small- medium enterprises (SMEs) that requires no collateral, credit history, smartphone ownership nor any digital or financial literacy.

Waitwhile

Founder: Christoffer Klemming
Google Role: Growth Product Manager
Capital Raised: $12M
Investors: CRV
Stage: Series A

Christoffer is the founder and CEO at Waitwhile. He has 10+ years of experience in Product Marketing and Growth at Google and startups.

Modern Fertility

Founder: Tom Chokel, Carly Leahy
Google Role: Software Engineer, Creative Lead
Capital Raised: $22M
Investors: Forerunner Ventures
Stage: Series A

Modern Fertility is a reproductive health company making personalized fertility information more accessible.

Comma AI

Founder: George Hotz
Google Role: Project Zero Intern
Capital Raised: $18.1M
Investors: a16z
Stage: Series A

George is the founder of comma.ai. Comma’s mission is to provide a solution to enhance people’s drives, on cars they already own.

BorderX Lab

Founders: Jun Liu, Chengdu Huang
Google Roles: Staff Software Engineer, Engineer
Capital Raised: $20M
Investors: Kleiner Perkins
Stage: Series B

BorderX Lab is the leading e-commerce platform that brings the US and European merchants to global middle-class shoppers.

Group Commerce

Founders: Jonty Kelt, David Rosenblatt
Google Roles: Vice President, Display Advertising
Capital Raised: $39M
Investors: Spark Capital
Stage: Series C

QCraft

Founder: Cong Hou
Google Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $124M
Investors: Genesis Capital
Stage: Series B

Cong is the co-founder at QCraft, a world-leading self-driving technology company.

Paystand

Founder: Scott Campbell
Google Role: Engineer
Capital Raised: $98M
Investors: Serra Ventures
Stage: Series A

Scott is co-founder of PayStand. Paystand's on a mission to create a more open financial system, starting with B2B payments.

Lucid Green

Founder: Paul Botto
Google Role: Head of Google Analytics Sales and Enterprise
Capital Raised: $14.3M
Investors: Bravos Capital
Stage: Series B

Paul is the co-founder of Lucid Green, which is a platform for reducing costs, increasing transparency, and driving revenue for cannabis operators.

BitGo

Founder: Ben Davenport
Google Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $69.5M
Investors: Redpoint
Stage: Series B

Ben is the co-founder of BitGo. BitGo was founded to solve the secure storage problem for companies using Bitcoin. He also co-founded Beluga, a cross-platform (iOS/Android/SMS) solution for mobile group messaging.

ImageShack

Founder: Jack Levine
Google Role: Network Engineer/Manager
Capital Raised: $10M
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Stage: Series A

Jack is the founder at ImageShack Inc. ImageShack is the go-to hosting company for all of your online media. It provides quality products and hosts billions of images and videos for users around the world, making it one of the world's largest independent hosts.

Xperiel Inc.

Founder: Philipp Hertel
Google Role: Senior Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $14M
Investors: Compound
Stage: Series A

Philipp is the founder and CTO at Xperiel which is making the physical world digitally interactive, bringing the Real World Web (RWW) to life.

Rising Stars

Audioshake

Founder: Jessica Powell
Google Role: Vice President of Communications & Public Affairs
Capital Raised: $2M
Investors: Precursor Ventures
Stage: Seed

Jessica is the co-founder and CEO at Audioshake which uses AI to open up music and other audio to make it more interactive and accessible. Prior to that, she worked at Google and Badoo, covering everything from communications and marketing, to product management, business intelligence and biz dev.

SPATE

Founders: Yarden Horwitz, Olivier Zimmer
Google Roles: Trendspotting, Global Innovation Lead, Insights & Analytics
Capital Raised: $1.8M
Investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners
Stage: Seed

A machine intelligence solution for marketers to find the next big trend.

CrowdAI

Founder: Devaki Raj
Google Role: Data Scientist
Capital Raised: $8.4M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series A

Devaki is the CEO and founder at CrowdAI, Inc. CrowdAI is a no code, end-to-end computer vision platform that enables anyone to build their own production-ready computer vision models in days.

Plai

Founder: Logan Welbaum
Google Role: Growth Lead
Capital Raised: $2.1M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed

Logan is Founder at Plai. Plai is the ad tool built for small teams & creators to launch ads like a pro, no experience required. Simply plug in your creative and budget, and Plai runs your ad campaign for you.

Glide

Founder: Sebastian Tonkin
Google Role: Product Marketing Manager
Capital Raised: $6.1M
Investors: Global Founders Capital
Stage: Seed

Sebastian is the CEO at Glide, a venture-funded technology startup that's empowering 1.3M realtors with next-generation technology to reduce risk and improve client service throughout the home sale process.