Dan Kaplan

Startup CTO | Founding Engineer | Engineering Leader

I build winning teams and products. As a Startup CTO, I rebuilt entire platforms and drove a Series A raise. As the first engineering hire at PrizePicks and G2 Crowd, I built the foundations that scaled both companies to success.

Currently, I'm an Engineering Manager at Home Chef, where I lead two teams with eight direct reports, fostering growth from early-career to senior levels. I've spearheaded productivity improvements that led to a 30% increase in velocity, launched initiatives like #Tech-Talk-Tuesdays, PR Roundtables, and the AI Working Group to explore and implement AI technology, and achieved top scores in organizational health surveys for Innovation, Leadership, Management, and Recognition.

Previously, I was CTO at Five to Nine, where I built and scaled an engineering team, led a complete product rebuild, and increased team velocity by 150% while driving the technical strategy for a successful Series A raise. Before that, I was an early contributor to successful startups including PrizePicks and G2 Crowd.

I have deep expertise in Ruby on Rails, React, JavaScript, Postgres, AWS, and Heroku environments. I'm passionate about fostering team culture through psychological safety, process improvement through rapid agile practices, and building scalable, user-focused products that win.

In my free time, I'm an avid reader, golfer, world traveler, and am obsessed with anything Minions, Chicago Bulls, and Seinfeld.

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