Colton Kaplan

Host of Change with Colton🎙 Podcast | Operations | Strategy | Lean Six Sigma | Supply Chain | Eliminating loneliness on the founder journey | Growing Founder Social Club Community

I am the founder of Founder Social Club, a community built to eliminate loneliness for founders by bringing them together with mentors, investors, and peers through intentional events, content, and conversation.

Over the past year, I have hosted 60 plus events and grown the community to over 26k founders, investors, and operators.

Founder Social Club is focused on signal over noise, real relationships, and creating environments where trust and long term thinking can compound.

I also host the Founder Social Club Podcast, where I sit down with founders and operators to talk candidly about product, growth, hiring, fundraising, failure, and what it actually takes to build.

My background spans operations, supply chain, and scaling teams at high velocity. I previously helped launch next generation automated fulfillment centers at Walmart eCommerce and have worked closely with cross functional teams to drive execution at scale.

Today, my focus is on building Founder Social Club into a multi city ecosystem across events, media, and membership while partnering with aligned sponsors and investors who care about founders and long term impact.

Always open to thoughtful conversations and partnerships.

In my free time, I enjoy reading, listening to podcasts, spending time with my wife, and playing with my Shih Tzu Mila.

Founder and Product Manager

• Developed UI/UX interface and integrated software automating and optimizing efficiency for the customer
• Created process flow and built product roadmap launching 5 products in six months increasing revenue by 50%
• Identified pain points of target market, conducted market research and launched MVP going from 0 to 1
• Implemented agile and scrum methodologies executing sprints resulting in 30% response rate for outreach
• Prioritizing tasks of managing CRM, sales cycle, product marketing, and product and business development
• Executed data-driven analysis of competitor landscape resulting in iterating pricing models and monetization strategies

A few months ago Founder Social Club expanded to our first new city: NYC

Here is the highlight reel from that trip.

Next stop: Austin for SXSW.

We have now hosted 80+ events and grown to 32k+ people in the community.

I’m heading to Austin to co-host The Creator Economy: Media, Influence & Brand Building with my friends Rob Fajardo and Raquel Fajardo from Leave Normal Behind, who did an incredible job bringing this event together, along with 🚀 Andy Karuza from NachoNacho.

The creator economy has matured. What started as content is turning into companies, capital, and real influence.

We’re bringing together founders, creators, and investors to explore how influence is turning into real leverage.

One of the sessions will be a deep dive into scaling influence with Jack Dumoulin and Josh Smith, co-founders of The School of Hard Knocks, who have built a massive audience of 21M followers and 200M+ monthly views.

Another panel explores The ROI of Radical Authenticity.

In an era of AI generated everything, trust becomes the real moat.

We’ll discuss why high trust communities outperform mass reach and how investors are beginning to value “trust equity.”

Joining the conversation:
• Lucas Rizzotto — award winning futurist, TED speaker, and immersive tech pioneer with 100M+ views
 • Taylor Burner — founder of Agency 3-2 working with Nike, Jordan Brand, and DraftKings
 • Michael Smoak — founder of HigherUp Wellness (1M+ followers)

Excited for the conversations ahead in Austin.

#SXSW #CreatorEconomy #EliminateLoneliness #LNB

Podcast Host 🎙️| Founder Social Club | Eliminating loneliness for founders | VC Scout @ Headline

Building a company in the United States often brings immigration decisions into company structure, fundraising timing, and hiring earlier than expected.

Next week we are hosting Startup Immigration Playbook with Manifest Law covering visa options founders and startup teams often work through:
O-1, H-1B, EB-1A, EB-2

Some are temporary work visas while others are permanent residency paths. We will walk through when each is typically used, common approval mistakes, and what founders should start preparing early based on traction. There will be time for live questions as well.

Useful for founders, future founders planning a move, and teams working with global cofounders or hires.

Founder Social Club

#ManifestLaw #foundervisas #o1 #h1b #eb1a #eb2 #startups #immigration

When the right people are in the room, good things tend to happen.

Tomorrow Founder Social Club is co-hosting the Tech Career Showcase in SF at SVB with manny duenas 🛳️ (Intern Ship), and Steph Minaya & Jhillika Kumar (Mentra)!

Here are the teams joining us:

Trillboards, CEO - Sneh Dhruv
Building interactive real-world advertising experiences that connect physical spaces with digital engagement.

Currently Hiring:
• Account Executive
• Software Engineering Intern
​
SUN (a16z Speedrun), Co-founder & CEO - Artin Bogdanov
AI-powered audio learning app. AI podcasts and book summaries from a single prompt.

Currently Hiring:
• Founding Full-Stack Mobile Engineer (Flutter/Dart)
• Founding Back-End Engineer (Python, AWS, Supabase, LLMs)
• Social Media Content Creator

JigsawStack - Founder - Yoeven D Khemlani
Developer platform helping teams integrate AI workflows and automation into real products faster.

Currently Hiring:
• Founding Growth
• GTM Engineer

Azentic AI - Pradeep Padala & Aashish Parikh
Building AI agents that automate sales execution across CRM, meetings, and workflows.

Currently Hiring:
• Software Engineer
• AI/ML Engineer

​FUSE HEALTH INC 
Currently Hiring:
• CTO / Founding Engineer

Mentra
A San Francisco–based neurodivergent hiring platform and network. Mentra is building a future where neurodivergent talent is valued, supported, and matched with workplaces that truly understand ND needs.

Hiring for Microsoft roles: 
• Data Center Technician
• Critical Data Technician

GitHired - Krishna Oza
Sourcing early engineers and builders for high signal startups working on frontier AI and developer tools.

​Currently Hiring For Roam, Caddy, and The Token Company

Roam – Applied AI lab building world models for real time 3D environments (SF)
• Member of Technical Staff — Agents & Diffusion
• Applied AI/ML Developer

​Caddy (YC F25) – Agentic productivity platform working directly with founders (NYC, in person)
• Software Engineer — Core Systems

The Token Company (YC W26) – ML lab focused on state of the art LLM input optimization (SF, pre seed)
• ML Engineer — Early Team

See you tomorrow.

Let’s get people hired 🚀

Excited to bring together founders and investors tomorrow in San Francisco for the Global Founder & Investor Summit.

Founder Social Club and Venture Bridge Hub are gathering ecosystem leaders from Africa, London, Europe, and Silicon Valley for an evening focused on cross-border connections, startup pitches, and real conversations.

Featured Speakers
• Marsha Wulff — Co-Founder LoftyInc Capital
 • David Hubert — VP of External Relations EuroCham - Association of American European Chambers of Commerce and Business Associations
 • Borja Palma Huarte — Business Development Manager @ London & Partners
 • Alfredo Coppola — Co-CEO @ US Market Access Center

Startup Judges
• Evan Buhler — Founder + General Partner @ Talok Capital
• Ulvi Rashid — Founding Partner @ Traction Fund
• Pasquale Zaccarella — Shareholder & Investor @ Eden ventures

Grateful to Daniel Fidanque and the team at Manifest Law for partnering on the event and supporting founders building across borders and to Bryan & Viet Andy Nguyen at SVB for hosting us.

Should be a great room of founders and investors building across borders.

Should be a great room.
See you tomorrow in San Francisco.

Thank you to everyone who joined us in San Francisco for the Global Founder & Investor Summit.

It was great spending the evening with founders, investors, and friends from Africa, London, Europe, Silicon Valley, and many other parts of the world.

Really enjoyed the conversations and the chance to bring different parts of the ecosystem together in one room alongside Venture Bridge Hub.

Appreciate the panelists, startups, judges, and everyone who came out.

Also, grateful to Manifest Law and the SVB team for supporting the event.

Manifest Law is offering the Founder Social Club community a free consultation with one of their immigration attorneys and a $500 visa credit using code FSC.

Link in the comments.

#FSC #bridgethegap #capital #connection #world #impact

Adeep Chooramun, MBA, Daniel Fidanque, Viet Andy Nguyen

Founder Social Club is launching a new series called The Reserve on Wednesday 2/25!

Excited to partner with HubSpot (Mahir Kumar Singh) & Azentic AI (Pradeep Padala & Aashish Parikh), this is a small, curated room for 20–25 founders & investors.

The goal is simple: create a space where people can slow down and actually get to know the people in the room.

Every guest is intentionally selected so the conversations feel natural.

This first edition includes a margarita making class and live cooking demo. Shared experiences just make conversations easier.

For founders doing $500K+ ARR or $500K+ raised, and investors actively backing companies.

Approval required. Location shared after acceptance. 21+.

If this sounds like your kind of room, message me.

#FSC #HubspotForStartups #Azentic

Many SaaS founders hit a wall around $50k–$100k MRR.

Not because demand disappears, but because the systems that got you there stop working at the next stage.

Tomorrow Founder Social Club is hosting Breaking Through Your MRR Ceiling (Zoom) with Carlos Ignacio Sanabria from Designli.

He will break down:
• Why MRR plateaus are often structural signals, not market failure
 • How to make product value more visible without adding features
 • Expansion metrics that drive ARPU and retention
 • How founders expand their ICP without risky pivots
If you are building toward the next stage of growth, this should be a valuable session.

RSVP  👉 https://luma.com/myxywrhq

#FSC #MRR #ARR #growth

Excited to bring 4 more companies hiring!!! Join us later today at SVB.

Trainsit - The AI-first platform to allow businesses to optimize and convert their supply chain towards rail, the better option for the environment and wallet. 
• 2 Founding Engineers

SigIQ.ai - Democratizing Personalized 1:1 Learning for Everyone
• Senior Product Designer
• Senior Full Stack Engineer

NexDiscovery - Agentic AI that monitors enterprise data, uncovers hidden insights, and takes action before teams even know to ask.
• Founding Enterprise AE
• FDE / Solutions Architect
• Pilot Program Lead
• Chief of Staff
• Partner Channel Sales

​Regulis AI - Developing AI products for the transportation industry. 
• Software Engineer
• AI/ML Engineer

RSVP here: https://luma.com/s396by7m

If you’re a new grad or early career right now, you know jobs are hard to get.

That’s why I’m co hosting my third hiring experience with Colton Kaplan - Founder Social Club, Steph Minaya and Jhillika Kumar - Mentra to help people find opportunities. (Link to register in the comments)

This isn’t a traditional job fair.
Smaller room.
Founders introducing themselves.
Human conversations.

And I’ll say it clearly:

Startups are one of the most powerful pathways into a career right now.

When you join early, you get proximity, ownership, speed, and real reps.

Here are the teams pitching and hiring today:

🚀 Trillboards  
CEO: Sneh Dhruv 
Building interactive real-world advertising experiences that connect physical spaces with digital engagement.

Currently Hiring:
• Account Executive
• Software Engineering Intern

🎧 SUN (a16z Speedrun)

Co-founder & CEO: Artin Bogdanov
AI-powered audio learning app. AI podcasts and book summaries from a single prompt.

Currently Hiring:
• Founding Full-Stack Mobile Engineer (Flutter/Dart)
• Founding Back-End Engineer (Python, AWS, Supabase, LLMs)
• Social Media Content Creator

🧩 JigsawStack 

Founder: Yoeven D Khemlani
Developer platform helping teams integrate AI workflows and automation into real products faster.

Currently Hiring:
• Founding Growth
• GTM Engineer

🤖 Azentic AI

Pradeep Padala & Aashish Parikh  
Building AI agents that automate sales execution across CRM, meetings, and workflows.

Currently Hiring:
• Software Engineer
• AI/ML Engineer

🏥 FUSE HEALTH INC  
Currently Hiring:
• CTO / Founding Engineer

🧠 Mentra  
A San Francisco–based neurodivergent hiring platform and network building a future where neurodivergent talent is valued and supported.

Hiring for Microsoft roles:
• Data Center Technician
• Critical Data Technician

🔎 GitHired – Krishna Oza 
Sourcing early engineers and builders for high-signal startups working on frontier AI and developer tools.

Currently Hiring For Roam, Caddy, and The Token Company:

Roam – Applied AI lab building world models for real time 3D environments (SF)
• Member of Technical Staff — Agents & Diffusion
• Applied AI/ML Developer

​Caddy (YC F25) – Agentic productivity platform working directly with founders (NYC, in person)
• Software Engineer — Core Systems

The Token Company (YC W26) – ML lab focused on state of the art LLM input optimization (SF, pre seed)
• ML Engineer — Early Team

(See the rest of the companies hiring in the comments.)

Smaller sessions.
Deeper conversations.
Space to engage at your pace.

We’re creating human first hirng experiences.

Let’s get people hired 🚀

Join manny duenas 🛳️ and the Intern Ship talent network. Things are coming. 👀

#talentnetwork

I’m super happy to announce…



I’ve decided to launch the best talent community the world has ever seen!

Welcome to the 𝐈𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐧 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐓𝐚𝐥𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤!

Join to get access to a hidden job market and more human first IRL hiring experiences.

This is personal for me.

When I started the Intern Ship, I was a University Recruiter at Intuit helping students land jobs there.

Which meant every time someone walked up to me at one of my Intern Ship events asking me to help them find a job - I had to tell them

“Oh sorry I can only hire for Intuit.” Which often times wasn’t even hiring yet.

That happened A LOT. It was literally one of the biggest reasons people kept coming to my events - they wanted to meet recruiters.

I heard them loud and clear. I just couldn’t do anything about it.

UNTIL I LEFT.

Now that I’m free from corporate and any conflicts of interest I’m locked in to helping my community find more opportunities.

Drop a 🛳️ in the comments, like and I'll send you the link to join.

Follow me so I can send you a DM!

Jordan Wilson

'Everyday AI' Show host | AI Strategist and Consultant | Startup scaler and investor | Digital Agency Owner | Strategy > Marketing

Accelerant Agency scales small businesses by developing and executing their digital strategy. After a decade of partnering with Fortune 500s, Accelerant’s CEO wanted to bring those bring enterprise-level strategies to small businesses. 

Accelerant Agency takes the guess work out of growing online. We take a different approach: selectively seeking out ideal small business partners with enormous growth potential. We meticulously pair your online blind spots with the right digital strategy to explode your potential.

ChatGPT Strategist

- Developed and executed ChatGPT strategies, enabling businesses to scale operations and enhance customer experiences.
- Leveraged generative AI to refine software engineering practices, overseeing teams where one engineer supports the productivity of hundreds.
- Instituted AI governance measures, controlling AI usage within the workplace and mitigating risks associated with personal AI applications.
- Drove the implementation of autonomous agents, reducing the need for user prompting and enabling higher-level problem-solving capabilities.
- Championed the integration of open-source and multimodal AI models, paving the way for more sophisticated, application-centric AI solutions.

Why can't most companies show their ROI on GenAI? 

Because their implementation is backwards.

If you're using the same digital transformation playbook that you used for the social media and cloud eras, you're in trouble. 

On this 'Start Here Series' episode, we break down what your company is doing wrong and the 7 Step process to properly calculate ROI on your AI efforts. 

Measuring AI ROI: Why you’re doing it wrong and the 7 Steps to fix it -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

Measuring AI ROI: Why you’re doing it wrong and the 7 Steps to fix it

OpenAI dropped GPT-5.4 Thinking and Pro. 🚨

Annnnd? 

The usual. 

↳  Benchmarks are wild. 
↳ Performance is elite. 
↳ Everyone's impressed.

Cool. 

Now let's talk about what actually matters.

This wasn't a model update. It was a direction change.

OpenAI is going all-in on long-running tasks, computer use, deeper research, and serious AI workflows. That's not a chatbot play. That's a work system play. 

We break it down and dish 7 big takeaways on the new GPT-5.4 model. 

GPT-5.4 Released: 7 Takeaways you need to know about Openai’s New model -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

GPT-5.4 Released: 7 Takeaways you need to know about Openai’s New model 

Spent hours testing AI models? ⏳

Same. 

Openclaw setup still broken, heartbeat still dead? ☠️

Yep, been there. 

Perplexity’s new agentic tool called Computer might’ve finally solved it. 

With no technical knowledge and a simple prompt, you can have agent swarms actually working for you and getting stuff done. 

Did we finally arrive in AI agent nirvana? 

Probably not. 

Because as impressive as it is, there’s one big caveat that will likely stop it dead in its tracks. 

Perplexity Computer: What it is, How to use it and is it better than OpenClaw? — An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

Perplexity Computer: What it is, How to use it and better than OpenClaw?

While Anthropic and the Pentagon fought, OpenAI swooped in to secure a big deal. 

But at what cost? 

And while it seemed like the entire AI news world was wrapped up in the Anthropic-Trump-OpenAI drama, the rest of big tech went nuts. 

Microsoft teased something agentic, Claude actually shipped it, and Perplexity dropped probably its most important product to date. 

This week’s theme apparently: drama and agents. 

We’ll get you caught up on all of the AI News That Matters. 👇

Trump bans Anthropic, OpenAI signs Pentagon deal, big AI goes agentic and more AI news -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

Trump bans Anthropic, OpenAI signs Pentagon deal, big AI goes agentic

Everyone's chasing the next big model drop.🫳
Meanwhile, the AI updates that actually change how you work? Flying completely under the radar.
The flashy headlines get the clicks. The incremental features, quiet rollouts, and "minor" updates? That's where the real compounding value lives, and almost nobody's talking about them.
We've been guilty of chasing the shiny objects too. That changes today.
New segment on Everyday AI: the AI updates that actually matter, without the hype.
Starting with 7 huge AI feature updates you probably missed.

7 Huge AI Feature Updates You Likely Missed: From AI Video and Gmail to Agents -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

7 Huge AI Feature Updates You Likely Missed: From AI Video to Agents

If your entire company was using ChatGPT in 2022.... good chance you ended up in some trouble. 😬

Now if you're company is NOT using AI in 2026.... you'll definitely be in trouble. 

But a different kind. 

That's how quickly AI has changed the business landscape. What was once a megaviral party trick in 2022 is not the lifeblood of the American Enterprise. 

So.... how the heck did it happen so fast? 

In our 10th volume of the 'Start Here Series,' we break it all down. 

From AI Chatbot to Autonomous Coworkers: How Consumer AI Has Changed and  What's Next - An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

From AI Chatbot to Autonomous Coworker: How AI Has Changed and What's Next

Facts: AI started mainly as a marketing tool. 📢

Sure, many marketers have been ahead of the curve when it comes to AI tools and creating high-quality, AI-driven outputs. 

But now they face a major problem: decades of marketing experience can no (largely) be achieved with a few reps of today's latest AI tools. 

So, what's your company supposed to do? And how can you possible build a team full of AI-savvy marketers? 

Join us and find out. 

How to Build a Team of AI-savvy Marketers -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson and  Scott Morris

How to Build a Team of AI-savvy Marketers

AI hasn't caused mass unemployment. Yet. 😳

Although Anthropic's new study on the labor market impacts of AI showed no real signs of massive job disruption in jobs exposed to AI, it did outline which sectors and job types might be first on the AI automation chopping block. 

On today's show, we'll not only break that down, but also dive deeper into a more immediately impactful job trend that AI has caused. And your company definitely can't afford to ignore it. 

Is AI creating a great recession for white collar workers? Inside Anthropic’s labor report -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

Is AI creating a great recession for white collar workers? 

In between the Pentagon officially labeling Anthropic and then Anthropic threatening to sue the government, there were actual huge AI updates, releases and news that impacts us all. 

↳ OpenAI dropped the world's best AI model. 
↳ Google dropped the best fast and cheap model. 
↳ Jensen Huang sang the praises of OpenClaw. 

And a whole lot more. 

Dont' show up to work this week not knowing the big AI moments that are shaping work. 

We'll get you caught up with our weekly 'AI News That Matters' on Monday. 

OpenAI drops GPT-5.4, Pentagon and Anthropic drama continues, Jensen Huang praises OpenClaw and more -- An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

OpenAI drops GPT-5.4, New Gemini, Jensen Huang praises OpenClaw and more

Wish you had Jarvis-esque control over information? 🦸

Now you do. 

While the AI drama and model releases were poppin, OpenAI snuck in a powerful update to its popular Deep Research mode. 

Missed it? You already KNOW we're giving it the 'AI at Work on Wednesdays' treatment to break down what's new and 5 ways you can use it today. 

ChatGPT’s new Deep Research Update: 5 Ways You Can Use it Today - An Everyday AI Chat with Jordan Wilson

Angie Thompson, MFRW, Mohammed Shakeeb and 9 other attendees

ChatGPT’s new Deep Research Update: 5 Ways You Can Use it Today.

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