2025 - 2026
2021 to present
Co-founder and CEO at Colabra
Building Colabra from pharma and scientific R&D software into AI for buy-side M&A diligence. Product, sales, fundraising, hiring, and building a go-to-market motion precise enough for high-stakes buyers.
Philip and I met in fall 2020 at an On Deck hacker house and started building together almost immediately. We were both repeat founders and both drawn to problems where messy source material and real-world decisions meet. Over the life of the company we raised about $3 million, iterated through half a dozen product shapes, pivoted from pharma R&D into buy-side M&A diligence, and built an original founder-led sales motion from scratch.
2024 - 2025
2024
2023
2022
Aug 2021
2020 - 2021
Selected coverage
Wall Street Journal - venture investors back scientific software startup Colabra
Coverage of Colabra following its early fundraising.
Forbes - This Startup Just Raised $1.5 Million To Help Scientists Share Their Data
Feature by Jair Hilburn on Colabra and its $1.5 million raise.
Green.org Person of the Week
Profile interview about my background and work.
On Deck Founders feature - Colabra Raises $1.5 Million
Feature on Colabra and the early financing round.
On Deck Founders - Top Co-founders: Aoi Senju and Philip Seifi
Feature on the Colabra founding team.
Talks and appearances
PEI NEXUS 2026
Pitch slot in the High Growth Sectors room covering technology, healthcare, and energy transition.
ACG Silicon Valley Tech Conference
Startup showcase table plus a short main-stage pitch for Colabra.
ProVisors AI Affinity Group
Speaking slot on AI in M&A and how to evaluate workflow tools in high-stakes diligence.
IBA monthly meeting
Presenter on AI workflows and practical adoption in diligence work.
ACG AI "Touching Technology" event
Organizer and presenter for an ACG event featuring AI companies demoing to private-equity attendees and founders.
ACG M&A West
Planning committee member and organizer of the AI panel / fireside chat content for the conference.
Case studies and product signal
Gladstone Institutes case study
Public case study from the earlier R&D chapter, useful as evidence that teams were getting real value from the product before the pivot.
Writing
I've been building with LLMs since March 2023
The full arc of how Colabra adopted LLMs, from the first GPT ticket in March 2023 through hallucination fixes, vector search, the pivot, and prompt cache optimization today.
How our pitch changed when our buyers got smarter
How the sales pitch evolved from feature descriptions to persona-native language as M&A buyers became more sophisticated.
The founder's AI stack: how I actually use it
A detailed look at the skills, integrations, and workflow I use to get real leverage from AI as a founder.
What I was wrong about
Eight bets I got wrong building Colabra, and what each one cost.
How I run GTM and sales with AI
The specific system behind outbound, meeting prep, follow-ups, and re-engagement, all grounded in transcripts and run through custom AI skills.