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Founder133
56th percentile
Investor0
YC S13Serial FounderAcquired2 ExitsRaised $40M+
Founder Matrix
Most Complimentary
Credibility
this founder typical founder (50th pct)
Technical Depth · 93th percentile
- Currently shipping public code with the most recent push 50 days ago to the repo 'gratos'.
- Active builder on GitHub with 75 public non-fork repositories.
- GitHub account @polvi confirmed as Alex Polvi's account via LinkedIn profile link.
- GitHub account has been active for approximately 17 years, created in January 2009.
Founder score
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)Y Combinator alum, having participated in both the W09 (Cloudkick) and S13 (CoreOS) batches.
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)Exit: CoreOS was acquired by Red Hat in January 2018.
- 99%Probability of being accurate (99%)GitHub account @polvi confirmed as Alex Polvi's account via LinkedIn profile link.
- 97%Probability of being accurate (97%)Active on Hacker News with 2,394 karma.
- 97%Probability of being accurate (97%)Past founder of CoreOS and Cloudkick, both of which were acquired.
- 97%Probability of being accurate (97%)Identified Hacker News account @polvi with 2,394 karma, confirmed as Alex Polvi via HN bio.
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)Exit: Cloudkick was acquired by Rackspace in December 2010.
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)Co-founded both CoreOS and Cloudkick with co-founders.
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)Active builder on GitHub with 75 public non-fork repositories.
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)GitHub account has been active for approximately 17 years, created in January 2009.
- 92%Probability of being accurate (92%)Active poster on Hacker News with 64 story posts.
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)Currently shipping public code with the most recent push 50 days ago to the repo 'gratos'.
- 90%Probability of being accurate (90%)Posted 'Show HN: CoreOS, a Linux distro for containers' on Hacker News, receiving 417 points.
- 88%Probability of being accurate (88%)Raised $48M total across CoreOS and Cloudkick.
Investor score
No signal on this dimension.
What you likely need
Alex is a two-time acquired founder with deep cloud-native and open-source credibility, having built CoreOS into a Red Hat acquisition and Cloudkick into a Rackspace acquisition. His current public activity (GitHub pushes, a new open-source auth project 'gratos') suggests he is actively building again. The next step is likely deciding whether to raise for a new venture or continue in stealth/bootstrapped mode.
Are these your current priorities?
We will tune and customize your Founder Festival experience to make sure you get invited to the events that would be most valuable to you.
- introsRe-engage the YC alumni network (W09 and S13) to source co-founders, early customers, or seed investors for your next venture.
- positioningExplicitly position your CoreOS and Kubernetes ecosystem contributions in public writing to attract top-tier engineers and investors to your next company.
- fundraisingIf 'gratos' (your open-source auth project) gains traction, consider a pre-seed or seed raise given your track record with Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia, GV, and Kleiner Perkins.
- tacticalWith 75 repos and active shipping, a focused effort to promote 'gratos' on Hacker News and Product Hunt could rapidly grow your 203 GitHub followers and validate the project.
- introsGiven two successful exits and deep cloud-native expertise, consider formalizing an angel investing practice in the infrastructure and security space where your pattern recognition is strongest.
- positioningWrite a long-form post or essay on the CoreOS journey — from YC S13 to Red Hat acquisition — to build thought leadership and attract inbound deal flow or co-founder interest.
- wellbeingTwo acquisitions in a decade is a significant achievement; take deliberate time to define what success looks like for the next chapter before committing to a new venture.