Welcome to the 51st edition of the Geeks Of The Valley (GOTV) Newsletter, where we curate interesting early-stage/pre-funded companies every week. If you enjoy and want to keep abreast with insights and interesting early-stage startups before they go big, subscribe to this newsletter ✌️.

Geeks of the week

Startup Name: Ferry

Geography: US

One-liner: Financial tools to power the service worker economy.

Founder(s) Background: Senior Director of Ops @ Petal ($800m+ val), VP of Ops @ Power Finance (Backed by Anthemis & CRV).

Raised $$ / Backed By (Public Source): NA // stealth

Startup Name: Birthday App (Please reach out to [email protected] / reply to this email, for intro request)

Geography: US

One-liner: Shazam for birthday.

Founder(s) Background: Founder of Laurel & Wolf (backed by Benchmark & CRV), Founder of Showroom (backed by 8VC and MetaProp), VP of Technology @ Hubble Contacts (backed by Founders Fund, FirstMark, Greycroft), Global Director of Strategy @ TBWA\Chiat\Day (clients include adidas, Apple, Hilton Hotels, McDonald's, Nissan and Singapore Airlines).

Raised $$ / Backed By (Public Source): NA

Interesting thought: This idea could resonate to below tweet under the “Personal CRM” space.

and would be interesting to see if they would be *in the future* working on gift card integration / collaboration as well.

Startup Name: Explainpaper

Geography: Global

One-liner: Upload *any paper* and start instantly getting explanations!

Founder(s) Background: Founders @ Lui (Command Line for Figma), Data Engineering @ Warner Bros. Games.

Raised $$ / Backed By (Public Source): NA

Product Demo:

Traction: