70th percentile
YC S16 founder and 3x entrepreneur building Upgraded's circular-economy device subscription platform
Credibility
Operator · 74th percentile
- Current founder and CEO of Upgraded, a circular-economy device subscription platform.
- Y Combinator Summer 2016 alum via Upgraded.
- Multiple companies were co-founded, including Upgraded and Demand Analytics.
Relationship Matrix
Most Complimentary
Founder score
- 95%Probability of being accurate (95%)Y Combinator Summer 2016 alum via Upgraded.
- 92%Probability of being accurate (92%)Current founder and CEO of Upgraded, a circular-economy device subscription platform.
- 88%Probability of being accurate (88%)Multiple companies were co-founded, including Upgraded and Demand Analytics.
- 85%Probability of being accurate (85%)Past founder of Demand Analytics and Conjunctured, both prior ventures he co-founded.
- 80%Probability of being accurate (80%)Upgraded has raised $4.0M in total funding across two prior rounds.
- 72%Probability of being accurate (72%)Exit: Demand Analytics was wound down after Groupon bought out a $5M contract in 2013.
- 45%Probability of being accurate (45%)Identified Stack Overflow account for John Erik Metcalf.
- 30%Probability of being accurate (30%)Upgraded (YC S16) is listed on Majestic Million via ycombinator.com (rank 3,731 for techtimes.com is unrelated; Upgraded's YC listing is the relevant signal here — no MM bonus applies as Upgraded's domain is not in the MM table provided).
What you likely need
Your Festival events should be laser-focused on three things: getting warm intros to Series A investors who understand hardware-as-a-service and ESG mandates, rebuilding your core team before you hit the fundraising trail, and sharpening your circular-economy narrative with founders and operators who've already told that story at scale. The highest-leverage rooms for you right now are YC alumni dinners with investor crossover, EU-market operator roundtables, and small gatherings where retail or OEM distribution experience is in the room.
Would you attend these IRL Festival events?
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.
- fundraisingA YC S16 alumni dinner for founders actively running Series A processes, to swap investor signal, compare Bookface intro strategies, and pressure-test unit-economics narratives with peers who know the same warm-intro paths
- positioningA roundtable dinner with ESG-focused institutional investors actively writing Series A checks into hardware-as-a-service and circular-economy plays, where Upgraded's Apple and Microsoft partnership proof points can anchor the conversation
- hiringA dinner for founders building in EU circular-economy and ESPR-regulated markets — covering OEM partnership structures, retailer channel strategy, and how to hire a country lead who can open doors in Sweden, Belgium, and beyond
- introsA YC alumni happy hour specifically for founders with electronics retail or OEM supply-chain exposure, engineered to surface warm intros to YC-backed or YC-adjacent buyers who are a natural fit for Upgraded's trade-in infrastructure
- introsA District Founding Member dinner to find co-investors and strategic advisors with retail or fintech distribution experience who can accelerate Upgraded's enterprise go-to-market before the Series A roadshow
- tacticalA build-in-public roundtable for early-stage founders who have shipped transparent growth pages — ARR, volume, impact metrics — to workshop how Upgraded can publish trade-in volume and CO2 offset data that converts both investors and enterprise buyers
- hiringA small workshop dinner for sub-10-person founding teams who have successfully rebuilt sales and partnerships functions before a Series A, focused on the specific hiring playbook for a company with Upgraded's profile and 7-person headcount