The Slack Mafia

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 take a look at the Slack Mafia. Slack has a really interesting background, it pivoted from being a video game company to...Slack. And now, 43% of Fortune 100 businesses pay to use Slack. The Slack Mafia is super impressive, with more than 20 companies founded in various industries.

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 and SpaceX 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:

• Damon Motors
• Fable
• Fanhouse
• ModernLoop
• Jeli
• CapIntel
• Aloft
• Rimeto
• SZNS
• Leap
• Graft
• CodePath
• Medley
• Playground
• Gym+Coffee
• Playground
• Atreo
• Starday Foods
• Tall Poppy‍

Damon Motors

Founder: Steven Lee
Slack Role: Director of Finance & Operations
Capital Raised: $56.6M
Investors: Techstars
Stage: Series B

Steven is the co-Founder and CFO of Damon Motors, a global technology leader disrupting urban mobility. Steven is an experienced financial executive with a career focused on growing early to mid-stage technology companies.

Fable

Founder: Jason Shellen
Slack Role: Head of Product
Capital Raised: $36M
Investors: Redpoint
Stage: Series A

Jason is the founder of Fable, a company making fun and useful apps for everyone. Jason is an entrepreneur and product leader known for co-founding beloved products Google Reader (retired), Boxer (acquired by VMWare) and Brizzly (acquired by Aol, repurchased in 2018).

Fanhouse

Founder: Amy S.
Slack Role: Software Engineering Intern
Capital Raised: $21.3M
Investors: A16Z
Stage: Series A

Amy is the co-founder and CTO at Fanhouse, a platform where creators can easily monetize content on their own terms and safely build authentic fan communities. Over the past eight months of their launch, creators have earned over $1,000,000 from their fans on Fanhouse.

ModernLoop

Founder: Lydia Han
Slack Role: Senior Product Manager
Capital Raised: $12.1M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Series A

Lydia is the CEO and co-founder at ModernLoop, a tool to schedule interviews, resolve interview meeting conflicts, send day-of reminders, and coordinate interviewers so that the company can deliver the best candidate experience.

Jeli

Founder: Nora Jones
Slack Role: Head of Chaos Engineering and Human Factors
Capital Raised: $19M
Investors: Heavybit
Stage: Series A

Nora is the founder and CEO at Jeli, the first dedicated incident analysis platform that combines comprehensive data to deliver more proactive solutions and identify problems. Nora has also co-written a book on Chaos Engineering.

CapIntel

Founder: Rob Crnkovic
Slack Role: Head Of NA Financial Services
Capital Raised: $11M
Investors: FinTech Collective
Stage: Series A

Rob is the co-Founder and GTM at CapIntel, an analytics and comparison platform that connects FA’s with their head offices and end-users in a simple, easy way.

Aloft

Founder: Yongxing Deng
Slack Role: Engineering Manager, Data Tools
Capital Raised: $25M
Investors: A16Z
Stage: Series A

Yongxing is the CTO and co-founder at Aloft, a company that provides a new, efficient approach to residential appraisal. By combining the power of technology and human intelligence, they are generating a faster, simpler and more accurate appraisal process.

Rimeto

Founder: Maxwell Hayman, Neville Bowers
Slack Role: Director of Product Management
Capital Raised: $10M
Investors: Floodgate 
Stage: Series A

Maxwell and Neville are the Co-Founders at Rimeto, which reinvented the enterprise directory to give people the understanding they need to work together effectively. Rimeto was acquired by Slack.

SZNS

Founder: Shean Kim
Slack Role: Sr. Software Engineer, iOS
Capital Raised: $10M
Investors: Pear VC
Stage: Seed

Shean is the co-founder and CTO at SZNS, an NFT fractionalization and DAO platform. It helps to curate NFT albums and build communities.

Rising Stars

Leap

Founder: Vishal Kapur
Slack Role: Senior Engineering Manager
Capital Raised: $3.1M
Investors: Creandum
Stage: Seed

Vishal is the co-founder and CTO at Leap, building a social video app on iOS for college students. Previously he was the co-founder and CTO of Screenhero - a simple, collaborative screen sharing and voice chat.

Graft

Founder: Adam Oliner 
Slack Role: Head of Machine Learning
Capital Raised: $19M
Investors: NEA
Stage: Pre-seed

Adam is the founder and CEO at Graft,  a cloud-native platform that empowers everyone in an organization to wield the most advanced AI techniques to unlock the value of text, images, video, audio, and graphs.

CodePath

Founder: Jules Walter
Slack Role: Product
Capital Raised: $8.1M
Investors: Meta
Stage: Seed

Jules is the co-founder and Board Member at CodePath, building the largest pipeline of high-performing underrepresented software engineers in the industry. Jules is a product leader with expertise scaling high-growth businesses.

Medley

Founder: Edith Cooper
Slack Role: Independent Board Director
Capital Raised: $3.7M
Investors: Foundation Capital
Stage: Seed

Edit is the co-founder of Medley, a company that harnesses the power of small groups to help people grow, on a mission to make small groups part of cultural vocabulary. She is one of the nation's leading business executives, having spent 30 years on Wall Street.

Playground

Founder: Daniel Andrews
Slack Role: Software Engineering Intern
Capital Raised: $3.4M
Investors: Bedrock Capital
Stage: Seed

Daniel is the founder at Playground, a childcare management software that manages billing, attendance, registration, communication, paperwork, reporting and more for childcare programs.

Gym+Coffee

Founder: Niall Horgan
Slack Role: Team Lead Large Enterprise Sales
Capital Raised: €17M
Investors: Castlegate Investments
Stage: Seed

Niall is the CEO and co-founder at Gym+Coffee, an Irish owned, and Irish designed athleisure clothing company, founded in 2017. Its goal is to build a brand that inspires people to Make Life Richer and it’s focused on building a community around this passion.

Complete

Founder: Rani S. Mavram
Slack Role: Data Intelligence Project Lead
Capital Raised: $4.1M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed

Rani is the co-founder and CEO at Complete. Rani was also the Associate Product Manager at Google.

Atreo

Founder: Jon Ball
Slack Role: Sr Manager, Quality Engineering
Capital Raised: $5.8M
Investors: Stewart Butterfield
Stage: Pre-Seed

Jon is the Chief Operating Officer at Atreo. Atreo harnesses industry expertise and modern technologies to create the next generation RTSM platform.

Starday Foods

Founder: Caroline McCarthy
Slack Role: Performance Marketing Lead
Capital Raised: $4M
Investors: Haystack
Stage: Seed

Caroline is the co-founder and Vice President at Starday Foods, a next-gen food conglomerate built for the 21st century. With a focus on sustainability, health, and data, they make delicious food with quality ingredients that reflect what we all want to be eating.

Tall Poppy

Founder: Leigh Honeywell
Slack Role: Security Response Manager
Capital Raised: $1M
Investors: Y Combinator
Stage: Seed

Leigh is the founder and CEO of Tall Poppy, building tools and services to help companies protect their employees from online harassment and abuse. She has also worked as a Venture Partner at Pioneer Fund.

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