Stealth Founders

Discovering tomorrow’s PayPal Mafia Today

Founding Engineer

+11

Mar 6, 2026

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6 min read

3.6.26 - Top Founders of the Week

Repeat founders with $450M in Plaid exits, Mach CTO, Nylas founders ($160M raised), WorkOS-acquired founder, Flux CTO, and Encord's Co-Founder & Founding Engineer

Founding Engineer

Mar 4, 2026

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4 min read

3.5.26 - The Mach Industries Mafia

Former CTO, President, CISO, Founding Aerospace Engineer and other builders from Mach Industries.

Founding Engineer

+10

3.4.26 - Nylas Co-Founders and WorkOS Builders

Mar 3, 2026

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5 min read

3.4.26 - Nylas Co-Founders and WorkOS Builders

Nylas Co-Founders ($160M raised), WorkOS & Aurora-acquired founders, YC W26 AI founder, and founding engineers from 14.ai & Smack Technologies

Founding Engineer

Mar 2, 2026

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8 min read

3.3.26 - The Plaid Mafia

$450M of Plaid exits, repeat founders backed by 8VC, Menlo & Abstract, two $90M+ executives, a YC W26 AI infra founder, and Plaid leaders across ML, Credit Engineering & Financial Products

Founding Engineer

3.2.26 - Flux & Encord Co-Founders + Founding Operators from Dots and Rowspace

Mar 1, 2026

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4 min read

3.2.26 - Flux & Encord Co-Founders + Founding Operators from Dots and Rowspace

Co-Founders & COO / CTO of Flux; Encord Co-Founder & CTO; Dots’ 1st FTE & Founding Engineer; and Rowspace’s 6th FTE

Stripe

+10

Feb 27, 2026

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5 min read

2.27.26 - Top Founders of the Week

Co-Founders of Cursor, Freeform, Fluidstack, Orum; creators of Stripe Checkout/Atlas/Connect/Dashboard; Playco CTO & Statsig founding engineer

Stripe

Feb 25, 2026

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10 min read

2.26.26 - The Stripe Mafia (Pt. 2)

Stripe-acquired repeat founder, CISO, Head of AI Development; Notion's 5th engineer; Anthropic and OpenAI alums; and 10+ repeat founders backed by Index, GC, and YC

Stripe

Feb 24, 2026

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12 min read

2.25.26 - The Stripe Mafia

GM for Connect & Global Payments (ran ~90% of Stripe P&L); Head of Applied ML; creators of Checkout, Atlas, Dashboard & Corporate Card; Atlas partnerships lead; Billing VP Eng; and founders behind Clearbit, Orum, Cocoon, Bouncer, Aqueduct, Payable and Cursor

Freeform

+15

Feb 22, 2026

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6 min read

2.23.26 - Fluidstack Founders, IQM’s CFO & a Freeform Co-Founder from SpaceX

Co-Founder & President @ Freeform, Co-Founders @ Fluidstack, SVP Product @ Cross River (GC-backed Founder of Seed); 0→€200M+ finance lead @ IQM