Afraj Gill
Founding Member of CreatorDAO
San Francisco Bay Area
Overview
Work Experience
Executive in Residence
2023 - Current
Supporting C100 founders on scaling/fundraising, and advising C100's CEO and Board on strategy. C100's global membership of ~500 C-suite executives and CEOs collectively represents a market cap of over $XX trillion, founders of companies valued at over $100 billion, and investors with $80 billion in AUM. Over the past decade, C100's early-stage fellowship has graduated companies with a collective valuation of >$15B, including companies like Wealthsimple, ApplyBoard, Ada, Sonder, Jane Software, Borrowell, among others.
Founding Member & Advisor
2024
Now JoinDistrict.com. One of the 100 founding members to help create a community owned by its members, where every member owns the treasury that has all the membership fees. Fellow Founding Members include Garry Tan, President/CEO of Y Combinator; Qasar Younis, founder of Applied ($6B+); Jeff Schneble, CEO of Human Interest ($1B+), Brett Gibson of Initialized; Marcelo Lebre, founder of Remote ($3B); Josh Buckley of Buckley Ventures ($1B+ AUM)
CreatorDAO is a decentralized community that invests in creators by providing capital, technology, and operational support.
Raised $20,000,000.00 from Roadrunner Ventures, Gold House Ventures, Abstract, a16z crypto, Alliance DAO, Alchemy Ventures, Position Ventures, Shima Capital, Bragiel Brothers and Nick Raushenbush.
Advisor
2024
Advising on corp dev/strategy
Merit’s Software with a Service (SwaS) transforms large-scale government programs.
Raised $78,925,000.00 from Quiet Capital, Govtech Fund, Collier Fund, Rose Park Advisors, Ricardo Marino, Alumni Ventures, Ram Shriram, Bow Capital, InState Capital and Experian Ventures.
Angel Investor
2021
Founders I have backed at the earliest stages have gone on to raise capital from investors like a16z, General Catalyst, YC & YC Continuity, Penny Jar, Village Global, Matrix Partners, Lachy Groom, Shrug Capital, Global Founders Capital, F.inc, and other awesome folks.
Advisor
2023 - 2023
I recruited Stability AI into On Deck before it received venture funding and prior to the launch of Stable Diffusion and the recent explosion in AI. Stability AI is an open-source generative AI company behind Stable Diffusion, an AI text-to-image generator. I was brought on by the CEO and leadership team to help the company operationally scale and support the business development team.
Partner
2021 - 2023
On Deck scaled to 300 employees globally, generated $20m in revenue, and raised $70m from Founders Fund and other top investors. Over 1,000 startups have been founded and launched at On Deck, collectively raising more than $2b. Our $100m accelerator and venture fund, ODX, invested in over 230 companies worldwide. I served as a confidant and coach to dozens of founders on operational scaling, fundraising, and go-to-market challenges, and helped scale the company as one of its leaders.
On Deck is a community platform designed to develop different ideas and build companies.
Raised $20,000,000.00 from Pioneer Fund.
Director & GM - Ventures
2020 - 2021
Leadership role in the ventures arm of one of the largest financial institutions in the world. Now under one umbrella, RBCx: https://www.rbcx.com/
Founder
2017 - 2020
We started Drop to help public transit agencies and cities extend the capabilities of their transit systems and solve the First-and-Last-Mile problem in the $200B+ public transportation industry. From Day 1, we had a different approach to building an enduring business: a robust partnership model with cities and governments. Today, while Bird has declared bankruptcy, Drop continues to steadily and profitably grow across 40+ cities. During my tenure, we raised capital from Trucks VC and Haystack (early backers of Instacart, Doordash, and others). I led all business/go-to-market functions, including helping raise financing and leading go-to-market; the deals I closed with cities while at Drop are still live and profitable today. I remain a large shareholder and cheerleader/advisor to the company.
Head of Product Operations
2015 - 2017
Backed by Georgian Partners ($8B AUM growth equity firm), Nova's customers include The Washington Post, The Economist, The Guardian, News Corp, NBC, and 140+ media publishers and platforms in 20+ countries. Worked with the CEO and executive team to enable the shift from a single-product line into a multi-product organization, launching multi-million dollar revenue streams for the largest digital media companies in the world.
Product & Strategy
2014 - 2014
Worked on strategy for pre-launch projects, including Google's first-ever physical store.
Google is a multinational corporation that specializes in Internet-related services and organizes the world’s information.
Raised $26,100,000.00 from Angel Investors LP, Kleiner Perkins, Signatures Capital, Sequoia Capital, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Shaquille O'Neal, Henry Kissinger, Google and Tiger Woods.