Hey - I'm Gelb
I'm an advisor, serial founder and media host. Most recently I was the CEO of HeySummit (0-$1m ARR in 18 months). Before that, I founded Kindaba, a private messenger for families.As a founder and CEO, I've had extensive experience with building teams up to 30+, managing founder relationship dynamics, experiment-driven pre-product-market fit, and deciding if, how, and why to fundraise.I serve on advisory boards and provide venture and founder mindset and business coaching to early stage founders and VCs and specialise in growing companies from Pre-Launch to Series A.
Work with me
As a founder & CEO of several companies, I know what it's like to be the ultimate decision maker and how lonely & complicated that position can sometimes feel. I'm most helpful when working with founders, investors or corporates who accept that internal mindset and approach affects external success. I can help with the following areas:Funding round coaching & investor relations
Co-founder search & relationship management
Team hiring, management through rapid growth
Mindset, emotional, confidence troubleshooting
Founder, co-founder, and investor conflict
Innovation, brainstorming, workshopping
Projects
I see work as a series of projects that should be fuelled by curiosity. Some will work, others won't, but if you can learn and experience new things, each project always has value.
Current
Alloy.vc
Working with some incredibly talented people, I'm building an equity accelerator and community for founders building the next big ClimateTech companies solving problems that matter.
Fala Humbie
Experiments at the intersection of the virtual and the physical. I'm using that as a launching off point to explore the over-hyped nature of Web3 and the Metaverse to see what real value they might hold to everyday life.
Advisory & Coaching
I've been building companies, programmes, and businesses for over 10 years, and have recently started formally advising early-stage founders on mindset and from getting to 0-1 on their startup journey.
Content Creation
Examining what makes an effective content creator from an audience growth, financial, and subject-matter perspective, and learning what works by doing.
Previous
HeySummit
2019-2022 | HeySummit is an online event marketing platform. I ran HeySummit from April 2019 to March 2022 where I grew the business to $1m in ARR, the team to 30+, serving over 3 million attendees. I also had to learn and lead through challenges like fundraising, over-hiring, underfunding, failed M&A, and stressful conditions.
Zero to Revenue
2019 | Zero to Revenue was a 1 week live-stream challenge to take a digital product from idea to revenue in a week. We successfully designed, built and launched Briefing Room during one week in March of 2019.
Kindaba
2016-2019 | Kindaba was a visual intelligent messenger that provided simple private sharing for families. At its height it had several thousand registered users, but after funding fell through it couldn't continue.
Bus 52
2012 | Bus 52 was a nonprofit project that involved 5 young people traveling around the US in a converted school bus making short films about people and groups doing inspiring things to make their communities better. We profiles 100 stories over 52 weeks from each of the lower 48 states. As seen/heard on CBS, ABC, NBC, NPR.
Let's chat
I'm always happy to chat, explore ideas, and offer support to early stage founders, investors, and corporates. Please select below based on what you'd like to discuss. If you'd rather speak outside of these times, please contact me here.
Thanks!
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