• Breakfast Club Boston, This Tuesday

• Breakfast Club New York, Thursday, October 19th

• Return the Fun(d) - DJ announcement

• 10 People you ought to know in Boston

Thank you to Fidelity for Startups for sponsoring today’s newsletter

Breakfast Club Boston (See you Tuesday!)

I’m teaming up with Jay Parehk (OG Breakfast Club Member and VC at Fifth Down Capital), Kylie Bourjaily (Innocrew Founder and Boston Super Connector), and Brett Perlmutter (Bulletpitch) to host the first ever Tech Breakfast Club in Boston.

If you know anyone in Boston doing something cool - reply to this email. I’d love to meet them/invite them.

Sign up here

Thank you to Fidelity for Startups for sponsoring Breakfast Club Boston

Fidelity for Startups is committed to supporting the startup & VC community. Fidelity helps founders prepare to raise with community, connections, and our cap table management and data room platform. We're working hard to give Carta a run for their money with a better product, better pricing, and a deep commitment to opening doors for founders.

Breakfast Club New York

Thursday 10/19 - we only have 50 spots this month but it’s going to be epic

NYC Tech Week Party:

• Thanks to Mercury, Republic, and Hirexe for stepping up big time and making this event free!

• DJ ANNOUNCEMENT: Orson 

• $100 cash prize for best Adam Sandler inspired outfit

• If you haven’t already signed up, now’s the time! Excited to see you there. Sign up below

10 People In Boston You Should Know

Kylie Bourjaily - 
Cohost for the first (of hopefully many) Boston Tech Breakfast Clubs, Kylie has packed a ton into her young career. Back in 2022, she successfully sold her startup, Marlowe, which focused on legitimizing the at-home childcare industry. Now, she heads up InnoCrew, a community for founders. Plan is to have her come down to New York frequently. Hoping a lot of NY Breakfast Club members get to meet her soon.

Jay Parekh -
Jay, an OG NY Tech Breakfast Club member, recently moved to Boston with his girlfriend who is a first year at HBS. From New Jersey originally, Jay went to Michigan for undergrad and then spent four years at McKinsey before jumping over to early stage venture at Fifth Down Capital. At Fifth Down, Jay writes checks from seed to series B and focuses personally on enterprise software and AI, though the fund itself is generalist. When asked about his transition to Venture, Jay says “Well at McKinsey, the clients were often incumbents in mature industries and - okay, actually let’s just say I’m having a lot more fun. Does that work?”

Abigail Risse -
Abigail is an engineer-turned-investor, currently working at Hyperplane, an AI/ML-focused seed-stage venture capital firm based in Boston. She is also the force behind Boston Teach Deals, a bi-weekly newsletter. You should subscribe (even though it's on substack, sad!).

Cindy Belardo -
Cindy is the co-founder and CEO of Sunny Period, a company bringing new ideas and products to the Menstrual Care market. After a trip to India, Cindy realized that menstrual products around the globe are inaccessible to many because of taboos surrounding periods, especially in impoverished areas. This led her and her co-founder Drew to develop the Sunny Cup, which solves the problems of cost (it saves users $5,000 over the product lifespan).

Andrew Smith -
Andrew is helping businesses connect better with their customers via smart QR codes. Before co-founding Swapt, he was a senior Enterprise Solutions Architect at Klayvio and worked in sales at Oracle and IBM. The iOS 14 update that allowed users to opt out of tracking destroyed many brands' ability to connect with consumers. Enter Swapt. Using QR codes and NFC chips as gateways from the physical to the virtual world, Swapt provides brands with new personalized ways to connect with their customers.

Jonathan Chang -
Jonathan 🤝 Tech Breakfast Club

Jonathan is a real one. We’re using MarkIt, his event/messaging platform for Breakfast Club Boston and loving it so far. Every time I catch up with Jonathan I learn about some completely new side of him. I thought he was just the founder of MarkIt. Turns out he’s also President of Techstars Boston. If you want to figure out what's going on in Boston, you need to follow Jonathan.

Apolline Deroche -
Apolline is working on an AI-powered audio analysis app that decodes babies’ cries. Her company, Cappella, which she co-founded directly out of MIT Sloan, not only gives parents a tool to monitor and interpret baby noises, but also generates soothing sounds that give tired parents a much needed break from the stress of having a newborn. Now that my friends are starting to have kids, I’ve realized there’s an almost endless appetite for tech that makes life easier for new parents.

Matt Crane - 
Matt Crane is the Founder of MGMT Boston, a newsletter and community that highlights top Boston area startups and the talented up and coming operators that help them grow. Subscribe here and in each issue you’ll learn about one startup and one elite operator. Matt moved back to Boston last summer after 10 years working in the Bay Area for venture backed startups, leading Customer Success & Operations teams for AdRoll and then most recently, Liftoff (acquired by Blackstone in 2021).

Jadyn Bryden -
Jadyn is engulfed in the university scene in Boston as she spends time working with incredible founders. She is the Vice President at Xfund, an early-stage focused venture fund that is based in Cambridge and Palo Alto. Jadyn loves all things creator economy and even shares her personal finance learnings on Tiktok to teach her GenZ peers how to be financially responsible.

Greg Montemurro -
Greg is the founder of Capital Z and Boston startup scene’s go-to guy for the most exciting and welcoming startup events in the city. Capital Z is a diverse community focused on bringing Gen Z startup folks together—often on rooftops with great views. The group boasts over 600 dynamic operators, founders, and investors, and they have an active WhatsApp group chat that you can turn to for further connection and support, and find out about other upcoming events. Greg is truly one of the nicest around, and if you need more convincing, here’s the first line of his LinkedIn bio: “I was raised in the Midwest, which means I will hold the door for you even if you're half a mile away, and I probably already asked you how you are.” 

If you’ve made it this far - reply and tell me your favorite failed startup and why it’s juicero