Built for Founders,
By a Founder

The idea for HeyJared struck me in a room full of Silicon Valley founders. The session was called: “How to Land in NYTimes.”

That moment exposed a critical blind spot. In the Bay Area—the epicenter of global tech—you can literally find hundreds of events a week on AI, crypto, bio, or robotics. But not one on PR. No one teaches founders how to tell their story. Which is why so many end up paying PR firms $30k retainers.

I looked around. The room was packed full of technical SF founders on a sunny Saturday morning. There were even several ex-YC founders in the crowd. I realized then that if the most resourced founders in the world struggled with this, it was much worse for founders who weren't even in the room.

The playbook outlined during the talk wasn't complicated, but it was tried and true: research your competitors, find the reporters covering them, read their work, and send a short personalized pitch. That's exactly what PR firms do—armed with legacy databases like Cision or MuckRack—before repackaging it into a $30k-a-year retainer.

HeyJared flips this dynamic. Built by founders, for founders. Our mission is to accelerate progress by helping builders spread their ideas early and widely, when it matters most.

Prior to founding HeyJared, I led Data Science at Checkr (a YC unicorn) and Rocket Fuel (a pioneer in AI-driven programmatic advertising). I've also invested in ~20 startups across energy (Aalo Atomics, General Fusion, Tactical Edge Systems), next-gen computing (Cerebras, Neurophos, PsiQuantum), robotics (Machina Labs, Gecko Robotics), and applied AI (Hologen AI, Kobold Metals, Shield AI, Anthropic). I started my career as a hedge fund analyst at BlackRock after graduating from UC Berkeley.

My goal with HeyJared is simple: help the best founders—and the best startups—win. Because human progress depends on it.