About me
I grew up in Canada 🇨🇦. I went to the University of Waterloo for Computer engineering and worked at a variety of early/growth-stage companies.
I've lived in many places like Lima, Porto, San Francisco, Ann Arbor, Toronto, and Vancouver. I love travelling and exploring new places.
Favourite things to do:
- ☕️ Drink (and brew) good coffee
- 🗣 Talk to passionate people
- ⛷ Downhill ski
- 🚴♂️ Bike (mountain and road)
- 🍸 Make and drink cocktails
- 🛬 Travel to new places for long periods of time (1 month+)
- ♣️ Play poker
- 🏐 Beach Volleyball
- 💻 Write code → Checkout:
What I'm doing these days:
- I’ve started a new company, more to come soon!
- I run a founder and investor poker game in Toronto. Message me if you’re interested in joining.
- Fractional CTO - I work with early-stage companies to help them build their team and product - not taking clients right now
- Investment Club Syndicate - Ian Logan and I run a syndicate on AngelList where we invest in a wide range of companies.
Things I've done in the past:
- On Deck - I was an engineering lead at On Deck. On Deck is where the world's top talent comes to connect. Whatever it is you want to do next, our ever-growing community and action-oriented programming will help you get there—fast. If you want to learn something new to up-level your career, launch and scale your big ideas, or make lifelong friends, this is the place for you.
- Kopa - In 2016, I co-founded Kopa, originally called PadPiper, with Jack and Courtney. We founded it on the belief that there is a better way to rent. Housing is such an important piece of our lives, yet it is one of the most stressful to acquire. We built Kopa to be the most streamlined process for renting a home, from searching to paying and moving in. Kopa went through YCombinator in Winter 2019 and has since expanded to over 300 cities in the United States and helped thousands of people find homes. In August 2020, I stepped back from Kopa to work on other things.
- All Access Fund - I work closely with Shaan Puri and his team at the All Access Fund to invest in early-stage companies. AA is a rolling fund deploying >$4m per year and writing ~40 checks per year.
- Toad (acquired) - I built a micro-saas business that was a simple and powerful link shortener. This got acquired by a venture studio in August 2021.
- Village Global - I work with Village Global to deploy capital to amazing early-stage companies. Village Global is the early-stage venture capital fund backed by successful entrepreneurs including Bill Gates, Sara Blakely, Barry Diller, Reid Hoffman, Magic Johnson, and Anne Wojcicki.
- Startup Poker - Startup Poker is a game to meet and connect with others in the startup realm. We are a group of founders, investors, startup employees, and creators from a variety of industries.
- Substack Newsletter - I’ve launched this Substack to write about ideas I have, frameworks I use and other things that I come across in my personal and professional life. I write about my experiences as I navigate fast-growth companies, invest in early-stage startups, and work with amazing founders.
- + worked at many other places like WorkOS, Farmlogs, Carrot, Universe, etc.
Find me on the internet:
Email: zlwaterfield@gmail.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zlwaterfield
How can I help
Here are a few areas I have some experience:
Engineering and Product Strategy - checkout my fraction CTO link above.
Fundraising Strategy / Pitch Help / Deck Review - I've helped >100 companies with YC prep and reviewed countless decks for founders raising their pre-seed and seed rounds. If you need help building a strategy around your raise, improving your narrative, or just getting a deck review, let me know!
Early Startup Operations - I've spent a lot of time both building my startup and helping other founders. There is a lot to manage. I'm happy to help think through those early operations like organizing your team, interviewing early hires, choosing the right services for payroll, bookkeeping, etc.
Co-founder dynamics - I've been through the ups and downs you go through with your founding team. It can be hard, but there are things you can do to make it easier. I'm happy to walk through strategies I've used that have worked wonders on team morale.
Investments
I started investing in the summer of 2020 - since then, I've invested in >50 companies; these are a mix of personal checks directly to the company, investments via syndicates, and scout checks.
I don't display syndicate investments where I don't have a direct relationship with the founding team. I also don’t list them all on LinkedIn …
