Luca is the team’s power user, a 10x employee across ops, sales, marketing, engineering, finance and strategy. His smarts come from being powered by the latest LLMs, and his deep pockets, from his relationship with many alternative credit hedge funds. Thanks to his instantaneous access to the Internet, Luca is infinitely knowledgeable. Like any smart and cheeky teenager, Luca is on a steep learning curve and will soon be able to make his own decisions, and take action; fulfilling his dream (and the team’s) of true agentic capability. Luca is quite amused to realise how meta his position is - he is helping build himself.

Eric Bidinger is an aerospace engineer and applied mathematician who spent 17 years in private equity in Asia, Europe, and North America. Eventually, he traded boardrooms for builder mode — returning to his roots in engineering to co-found startups in deeptech, B2B software, and the consumer space. Along the way, one truth became obvious: every founder needs a 10x co-founder — a swiss army knife who thinks strategically, executes relentlessly, and believes in the vision enough to fund it. The only problem? That person almost never exists. So Eric set out to build Luca with the rest of the team, including Luca himself. In his spare time, Eric helped develop the world’s first family of hydrogen-electric aircraft.

Abbas Khaku, an LSE graduate, has led organisations for 20+ years, specialising in data and operations. His experience spans private equity, AI FinTech, pharmaceuticals and equities - managing global cross functional teams to deliver technical solutions. At Valerian, he drives strategy, oversees delivery and ensures risk management throughout. He unites product, data, and engineering around a single goal: to turn business data into insights people can use day after day. Abbas can sometimes be found at various space centers around Florida.

Uzair graduated at the top of his class in Computer Science from a leading Russell Group university in London. Since then, he has established an outstanding record of engineering excellence, demonstrated in projects ranging from robust, high-performance systems for major investment banks, to the rapid development of complete products for dynamic, high-growth startups. At Valerian, Uzair brings his passion for building clean, efficient systems to the core development of our AI-powered data platform. He plays a pivotal role across the entire product: architecting the web application, designing the agentic AI system, and ensuring streamlined infrastructure DevOps processes.

Eugénie Fontugne is an accomplished product leader experienced in launching and scaling global digital and physical products, guiding teams from Geneva to Silicon Valley. Skilled in product development, brand strategy, and business growth, she adapts seamlessly across consumer goods and tech services. Fluent in four languages, Eugénie holds an MBA from Stanford, an MA/MSc in global communications from LSE and Fudan University, and a BA from ESSEC Business School. She enjoys baking, hiking, ocean swimming, and has a passion for chocolate.

Omar Saad translates complex technical challenges into production-grade AI and infrastructure solutions. He honed his expertise building scalable systems for the FinTech industry before taking the lead on architecting full-stack AI platforms from the ground up. Omar is the driving force behind the Luca AI system, a multi-agent platform that transforms business intelligence for e-commerce companies. When not building intelligent systems, Omar applies his optimization mindset to make incredible coffee.

Chess enthusiast, football fanatic. Rodney Ravu is a seasoned sales professional with over a decade of experience across various industries, from charity fundraising to enterprise software. He’s excelled in both leadership and individual contributor roles, consistently exceeding targets and building strong client relationships. Rodney has held leadership & senior positions at UNICEF, Plan International, Smile Train, The Sales Impact Academy, and Cognism, gaining valuable experience in dynamic markets. Whether connecting with donors or closing B2B software deals, he thrives in high-performance environments. At Valerian, he is responsible for designing, building, and executing the early-stage go-to-market (GTM) strategy, driving impactful results along the way.

Kaan Simsek is an AWS-Certified Solutions Architect and Machine Learning Engineer with 8+ years of experience delivering production-grade systems for B2B and B2C apps used by over 10M users across e-commerce, supply chain, fintech and gen AI domains. He has led data teams, productionized models, and managed multi-region cost-efficient cloud architectures. At Valerian, he provides data engineering services to support the platform, deploying AI/ML solutions at scale. Outside of work, he enjoys competing in chess and padel tournaments.

Anders Jorgensen, with a Master’s in Corporate Finance and a Data Science minor, drives innovation at Luca. He develops financial algorithms, refines funding strategies, and enhances client outcomes. Committed to democratizing capital access, he blends finance and AI to advance Luca’s mission of making entrepreneurship globally accessible.