The Instagram 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 we bring you none other than social media behemoth - the Insta Mafia! Some quick stats:
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Total number of companies founded: 33

Total capital raised: $248M

What's interesting is that many of the companies are web3-based companies, it seems to have been a trend amongst the employees of Instagram! Below we cover the top 24 companies in the Instagram Mafia.
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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, OpenAI,Google Mafia, Pinterest Mafia, Shopify Mafia and Coinbase Mafia 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:

Integrate AI
Alan
Bleacher Report
Rutter
Bitwise
Karat Financial
Chaos Labs
Rylo
Guilded
Run The World
CyberConnect
Tome
Transform
Dreams
Bloom
Fiix
Shibuya
Honeycomb
Attune
Nourish
Ottr Finance
Sesame Labs
Marco Experiences
Kangaroo

Integrate.ai

Founder: Steve Irvine
Instagram Role: Global Head - Instagram Partner Program
Capital Raised: $49.6M
Investors: Real Ventures
Stage: Series A

Integrate AI helps developers solve important problems in the world by unlocking the value from sensitive data. That's why they are building tools for privacy-safe machine learning and analytics for the distributed future of data.

Alan

Founder: Charles Gorintin
Instagram Role: Data Scientist
Capital Raised: $543.67M
Investors: Ribbit Capital
Stage: Series E

Alan is a health partner that offers intuitive health insurance, mental well-being services, and access to its clinic. They cover over 315,000 members and partner with 20,000 companies to promote a healthy and productive lifestyle. Alan has raised over €490 million and is licensed in France, Belgium, and Spain.

Bleacher Report

Founder: Omar Raja
Instagram Role: Founder of SportsPosters
Capital Raised: $40.5M
Investors: Hillsven Capital
Stage: Series C

Bleacher Report is a digital platform that caters to sports fans, providing sports and culture content created and collaborated on by millennials. Their focus is on the next generation of fans, with headquarters in San Francisco, and offices in New York City and London.

Rutter

Founder: Eric Yu
Instagram Role: Front End Engineer
Capital Raised: $28.5M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series A

Rutter is a trusted integration partner for leading fintech and commerce companies, offering an API that can read and write to 40+ commerce, accounting, and payment platforms. Its clients include Ramp, Mercury, and Airwallex, and its domain expertise in the space allows for tailored and efficient integrations.

Bitwise

Founder: Hunter Horsley
Instagram Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $84.5M
Investors: General Catalyst
Stage: Series B

Bitwise is a leading crypto asset manager in San Francisco, managing the world's largest crypto index fund and offering a range of products. It collaborates with financial advisors to provide research and education and has been featured in prominent financial publications.

Karat Financial

Founder: Eric Wei
Instagram Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $45.6M
Investors: Union Square Ventures
Stage: Series A

Karat Financial offers business credit cards tailored to the needs of digital creators and influencers. It is helping creators and influencers with their finances- eg taxes, bookkeeping, and cards.

Chaos Labs

Founder: Omer Goldberg
Instagram Role: Tech Lead
Capital Raised: $20M
Investors: Bessemer Venture Partners
Stage: Seed

Chaos Labs is a cloud platform addressing security vulnerabilities and technical challenges introduced by decentralized blockchain applications. It offers a testing environment for dApps through high-fidelity agent and scenario-based simulations, helping teams reduce their go-to-market time while ensuring the security of their protocols. Currently available for Ethereum, with plans to expand to other blockchains.

Rylo

Founder: Alex Karpenko, Chris Cunningham
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $31M
Investors: Sequoia Capital
Stage: Series B

Rylo is a compact and powerful camera that captures 360º videos with exceptional stabilization technology. Its advanced features enable users to create cinematic and visually appealing videos that can be effortlessly shared with others.

Guilded

Founder: Eli Brown
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $10.2M
Investors: Initialized
Stage: Seed

Guilded connects gamers and fans worldwide on all platforms, offering communication, recruitment, collaboration, and organizational tools to enhance their gaming experiences. The company's goal is to create an inclusive and enjoyable space for all gamers.

Run The World

Founder: Xiaoyin Qu
Instagram Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $14.8M
Investors: GGV Capital
Stage: Series A

Run The World is a one-stop solution for virtual social gatherings, webinars and conferences that deliver engagement. Run The World faced shut down worldwide due to the pandemic. Since then, Run The World has grown from five employees to 45 and hosted 10,000 virtual events for clients.

CyberConnect

Founder: Ryan Li
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $25M
Investors: GGV Capital
Stage: Series A

CyberConnect is a crypto startup developing tools for Web3 social media, gaming, and metaverse applications.

Tome

Founder: Keith Peiris
Instagram Role: Messaging & Camera AR Product Lead
Capital Raised: $75.3M
Investors: Greylock
Stage: Series B

Tome is a multimodal storytelling tool that utilizes generative AI. It's the first of its kind to allow creators to generate narratives ranging from presentations to outlines to stories along with visuals within seconds.

Transform

Founder: Paul Yang
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $24.5M
Investors: Index Ventures
Stage: Series A

The Transform App offers business intelligence with a metrics-first philosophy, providing stunning visualizations, governance tools, and monitoring capabilities. It is built on MetricFlow's advanced open-source semantic layer for consistency and unique analytical experiences.

Rising Stars

Dreams

Founder: Greg Hochmuth
Instagram Role: 2nd Engineer, later: First Product Manager
Capital Raised: $5M
Investors: BoxGroup
Stage: Series A

Dreams is a mobile-only TV platform that redesigns TV for the most important device. Dreams developed patent-pending computer vision technology to create a modern, mobile-first TV news experience. The company’s software converts live TV news into a vertical video format in real-time, enabling the first-ever live, 24/7 vertical video news channels.

Bloom

Founder: Lauren Vegter
Instagram Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $2.5M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed

Bloom is a consent-forward social and dating app that helps people connect and build community around events. Lauren is the founder who formerly worked as a product leader in software, led user acquisition growth at Instagram, launched consumer VR at Oculus, oversaw P&L for Faire (marketplace for makers and retailers).

Fiix

Founder: Zain Manji
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $1.9M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed

Fiix provides an affordable, convenient on-demand automotive repair service at your home or office to Toronto (GTA) individuals. Their fully-licensed, top-rated Fiix mechanics come to you so you don't have to waste time at the repair shop.

Shibuya

Founder: Jacky Wang
Instagram Role: Senior Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $6.9M
Investors: a16z
Stage: Seed

Shibuya is a web3 content studio and creator platform that prioritizes decentralization and blockchain technology for secure content distribution and monetization. It offers tools and resources to help creators produce high-quality content and build deep connections with their audience. Shibuya aims to disrupt the traditional content monetization model by leveraging NFTs and changing the way content is created, owned, and consumed.

Honeycomb

Founder: Nicole Wee
Instagram Role: Product Manager
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Precursor Ventures
Stage: Seed

Honeycomb is the easiest way to save your child's story - it's like a quick-easy-automagical baby book. Built by parents, for parents. It's like an interactive digital scrapbook.

Attune

Founder: Andy Bandyopadhyay
Instagram Role: Product Research
Capital Raised: $2M
Investors: Naval Ravikant
Stage: Seed

Attune is a B2B technology platform that helps employers and financial services firms enhance the financial health of their employees and customers. Its clients, including global card issuers, top 25 banks, and innovative credit unions, use Attune to assess and continuously monitor financial health data to improve their products and services. As a startup incubated within the Financial Health Network, Attune is a fast-paced, scrappy technology company that strives to make a big impact in the industry.

Nourish

Founder: Stephanie Liu
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $9.3M
Investors: BoxGroup
Stage: Seed

Nourish connects the user with a registered dietitian via telehealth and makes it easy to pay using health insurance. With a focus on patients with chronic illness, Nourish hopes to help Americans eat better.

Ottr Finance

Founder: Aleksei Zakharov
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $3.1M
Investors: Race Capital
Stage: Pre-Seed

Ottr Finance is a mobile wallet that’s bringing the best of web3 finance to non-crypto savvy customers, starting with instant global payments, zero-fee crypto trading, and yield products. Ottr Finance is a Circle Ventures Portfolio Company.

Sesame Labs

Founder: Aman Jain
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $4.9M
Investors: Twin Ventures
Stage: Seed

Sesame Labs are the first marketing platform for Web3, rethinking what decentralized and equitable ads look like in Web3. Sesame Labs raises $4.5M to help improve web3 marketing tools.

Marco Experiences

Founder: Nick Freeman
Instagram Role: Senior Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $2.9M
Investors: Potluck Ventures
Stage: Seed

Marco is a platform for finding, organizing, and booking high-quality experiences that promote collaboration and engagement. By creating experiences that build new relationships and strengthen existing ones, Marco believes technology can foster community.

Kangaroo

Founder: Maria Zlatkova
Instagram Role: Software Engineer
Capital Raised: $3.3M
Investors: Greylock
Stage: Seed

Kangaroo is a gaming platform which enables fans to interact with celebrities from Hollywood to NFT projects and create new story games in the metaverse. This innovative technology allows for the creation of interactive online stories for and by the fan bases of celebrities, media franchises and NFT projects.