Six Vercel alumni have raised $235M for their own startups
Category
Talent Maps
Posted on
Oct 28, 2026
Vercel’s head of engineering went on to build a fantasy sports app in Mexico. Its first salesperson is now building infrastructure for voice agents. Six Vercel alumni have raised $235M for their own startups, and one of those companies is worth $1B.
The founders
Jason Hoch, Nominal ($182.5M)
After Palantir and Vercel, Hoch co-founded Nominal, which builds software for testing mission-critical hardware. Founders Fund valued it at $1B in March 2026.
Joe Cohen, Draftea ($37.2M)
Cohen ran engineering at Vercel. Then he co-founded Draftea, a Spanish-language fantasy sports app based in Mexico and backed by Kaszek and Sequoia.
Simon Wijckmans, cside ($7.7M)
Wijckmans worked at Microsoft, Cloudflare and Vercel before starting cside, which secures the third-party scripts that run in a website visitor’s browser. Uncork Capital led its seed.
Luke Miller, SLNG ($3.9M)
Miller was Vercel’s first salesperson and built its business overseas. Now he’s building SLNG, “the Vercel for voice agents,” which routes voice agents across AI models in 11 regions.
Steven Tey, Dub ($2M)
Dub started inside Vercel, where Tey was a developer advocate, as a way to measure developer advocacy. Now a link attribution platform, it passed $20M in partner payouts this year.
Sarup Banskota, CodeCrafters ($1.8M)
Banskota quit Vercel in 2022 to build CodeCrafters, where experienced developers rebuild tools like Redis, Git and Docker from scratch. The YC company counts former Vercel COO Kevin Van Gundy among its angels.
Finding the next ones
Vercel’s leaders have backed this next generation too. CEO Guillermo Rauch invested in Dub, and Van Gundy invested in CodeCrafters.
Every founder on this map was once a Vercel hire. Somebody brought in a head of engineering, a first seller and a developer advocate, and each of them went on to build a company. Those are the hires that shape a team for years. Contrario’s network of expert recruiters finds them for high-growth startups, and ReAgent brings strong candidates from past searches back to the top, so teams meet them sooner.
Hiring your founding team?
Sources
Nominal about page: Jason Hoch's past experience at Palantir and Vercel, co-founders
Business Wire, April 2024: Nominal's $7.5M seed and $20M Series A, Los Angeles
Nominal Series B post: $75M led by Sequoia, September 2025
SiliconANGLE, March 2026: $80M at a $1B valuation, led by Founders Fund
Sequoia on Jason Hoch: what Nominal builds
TechCrunch, January 2022: Joe Cohen as Vercel's former head of engineering, Draftea's $13.2M seed
Techloy, September 2022: Draftea's $20M Series A led by StepStone
Caplight on Draftea: $37.2M total raised
Safety Detectives interview: Simon Wijckmans at Microsoft, Cloudflare and Vercel
cside seed announcement: $1.7M pre-seed and $6M seed led by Uncork Capital
Tech.eu, May 2026: Luke Miller as Vercel's first seller, what SLNG does, its €3.3M pre-seed
Osborne Clarke: SLNG's pre-seed as US$3.9M
K Fund podcast: Steven Tey as senior developer advocate at Vercel
Founders' Daily Briefing: Dub's $2M and its start inside Vercel
Dub about page: what Dub does, backers, partner payouts
TechCrunch, November 2024: Sarup Banskota leaving Vercel, CodeCrafters' $1.8M seed and backers
Pulse 2.0 on Contrario: Contrario as a recruiting platform for high-growth companies that pairs recruiters with AI agents
The future of hiring starts here
Ready to hire great talent fast? Get started with Contrario.
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