Dwg. GR-2026Sheet 1 of 1Rev. since 2004

Greg Raiz.

I invest in early founders at FoundersEdge and build things after hours: LED boards, eInk newspapers, desk controllers, AI tools. Some of them get finished. All of them end up here.

Role	General Partner, FoundersEdge. Pre-seed, UX + AI.
Previously	Founded Raizlabs (acquired 2017). Managing Director, Techstars Boston.
Builds	ESP32 hardware, dev tools, AI agents, a Mac app.
Off the clock	Sailing, skiing, piano, kitesurfing (still learning).

Pitch me See the builds

16 × 16 · 256 LEDs

PIXELBOARD v1 · ESP32

ESP32, about $5
WS2812B matrix
Build log
interactive games ↑

Operator

Who's at the desk

The short version. The long version has the full bio, press kit and FAQ.

Greg Raiz on a beach at dusk, smiling, in a light blue checked shirt

Bio, typed slightly crooked

Greg Raiz is a General Partner at FoundersEdge, backing pre-seed founders who build with great UX and AI.

Before that he founded Raizlabs, a four-time Inc. 5000 mobile studio, and ran it until it was acquired in 2017. Then he led Techstars Boston as Managing Director.

He has shipped hundreds of products for companies like AAA, Dunkin', GE and Macy's. Computer Science at Tufts. Lives in Massachusetts with his wife and two kids.

Off the clock: sailing, skiing, piano, and learning to kitesurf.

Figures, drawn to scale-ish

On the bench

Some of these shipped. Two are still secrets. Hover, click or use the arrow keys on any figure to run it.

T-bar: how far the dissolve has runProgram and preview monitorsArcLight is my Mac app for presentation-style live video, now in public preview. Every scene is a slide that can hold cameras, screen captures and media. Pull the T-bar and the program output dissolves to the scene waiting on preview; the tally lights show what is live. Grab the T-bar and, if you allow it, your own webcam becomes the camera feed.

Read the post Try the preview at arclightlive.com

Data line: ESP32 GPIO to the panel's DIN16 × 16 WS2812B matrix, 256 LEDsMy PixelBoard: 256 WS2812B LEDs behind a diffuser grid, driven by a $5 ESP32 running FastLED. One GPIO pin sends every frame down a single data wire; a 5 V supply powers the panel. Patterns, Snake, Tetris and drawing are all picked from a web page on any phone. Click the figure to change pattern; in Snake, the arrow keys steer. I built it starting from zero hardware experience.

Build log Watch it play Code

Front page: swapped with a full eInk refresh every 10 minutesBattery cells and Wi-Fi module in the open dockA 32″ Visionect eInk panel acts as a thin client. The newsprint app on a Synology NAS fetches front-page PDFs from freedomforum.org, renders them, and pushes a new paper over Wi-Fi every 10 minutes. With no backlight and no UI, the panel runs for months on a charge. The figure runs at 100× time-lapse.

Build log Code

The can: the one shell command cbot returnsStocked shelves: answers already in the cachecbot is an open-source command-line tool for using AI from your terminal. Ask in plain English, like “how much disk space is left,” and it replies with the shell command. It runs on GPT-5-mini and caches answers in SQLite, so a repeat question comes back instantly.

Read the post Code

Something I'm building. More when it's ready.

vibe.bikeUnder wraps

Something else I'm building, this one for the house. Spin it around and click a room to switch it. More when it's ready.

Under wraps

Green light: Hushhh is listeningBoxed grey words: heard, not yet typedHushhh is a free, open-source Mac app for dictation. Press Caps Lock and talk, and your words appear as grey ghost text at the cursor, in any app. Caps Lock again inserts them, Tab tidies them up with a language model first, and Esc cancels. Speech recognition runs on your Mac.