How Four buildspace Employees Became Founders, Inc.
When buildspace closed on August 24, 2024, four of its employees moved directly to Founders, Inc. — the venture firm that shared Fort Mason Building B with buildspace and had invested in its $10M Series A two years earlier 1617. Stavan Patel, Adrianna Lakatos, Aiden Blumenstein, and Dante Lentini each brought a different skill set — design, community-building, filmmaking, growth marketing — and each took a different path to buildspace before ending up in the same building under a new name 15.
Stavan Patel: from Microsoft to founding team to Creative Director
Patel grew up in India and moved to Chicago at age 14 2. He studied computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, graduating in 2014, and completed a Harvard Business School Online credential in accounting and business the following year 1. His first job was as an Azure consultant at Microsoft, where he worked from July 2014 to July 2017 13.
In August 2017 Patel left Microsoft to found Quze, his own startup, which he ran until March 2022 13. He then joined buildspace as Head of Design — part of the founding team working alongside Farza Majeed 181. At buildspace, Patel helped shape the visual identity of Nights & Weekends, designed the campus experience at Fort Mason, and built the brand's anime-inflected aesthetic across five seasons of the program 21. He held the Head of Design role from March 2022 through buildspace's closure in September 2024 3.
Patel announced his move to Founders, Inc. on April 22, 2025, in a post that described watching "one empty room stretch into a 42k sq ft playground for builders" over three years at Fort Mason and crediting Furqan Rydhan as "our first and biggest believer" during the buildspace days 4. His title at f.inc is Creative Director and Partner, a position he has held since March 2025 13.
By April 2026, Patel had designed four programs for f.inc: Off Season, Blueprint, Artifact, and Canopy 5. Canopy — a five-week program for teams building in software, hardware, and media — accepts 100 teams on the San Francisco campus and 400 online, with funding up to $250K 5.
Adrianna Lakatos: cold email to community lead to investor
Lakatos began college at 14 through Ohio's dual-enrollment program and held a BA in communications and marketing from Lake Erie College and attended Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business 6. Before entering tech, she ran a wristband reselling business in high school that generated over $100K in revenue and worked as a movie extra in films including White Noise (2022), Rustin (2023), and American Rust (2022) 67.
In January 2022 she founded OctoView, a marketing studio that worked with early-stage startups including Tokenproof (later acquired), Comm, Ghost, and Givepact 67. She held community and marketing roles at several of those companies simultaneously — Head of Community at Ghost, content strategist at Tokenproof, product marketing at Comm 6.
Lakatos joined buildspace in May 2024 in a community role, a position she got by cold-emailing Farza Majeed and flying to San Francisco three days later 6. She arrived from Ohio with, by her own account, "no job, no community, and no idea what was next" 8. Her buildspace tenure lasted only about three months — May through August 2024 — before the shutdown 6. On the day buildspace closed, she published an essay titled "Is creation still worth it?" on Medium, reflecting on the tension between human creativity and AI-generated content 9.
She moved to Founders, Inc. in September 2024, initially as Marketing Lead 6. By April 2025, her role had expanded to Ecosystem & Investments, writing first checks of $100K to $250K into founders building in AI, hardware, and robotics 67. She also built justmovetosf.com — a relocation guide for founders moving to San Francisco — and investorswhobuild.com, a community for investors who also write code 7. Furqan Rydhan "took a chance on me," she wrote in April 2025 8.
Aiden Blumenstein: from BCG to filmmaker to head of storytelling
Blumenstein studied business administration with concentrations in business analytics and marketing at Northeastern University, graduating in April 2024 10. Before buildspace he worked as a content specialist at Northeastern's IDEA Venture Accelerator from September 2022 to February 2024, and spent six months at Boston Consulting Group's multimedia marketing studio, where he produced social content for BCG's flagship podcast and helped it reach #1 on Apple Business Podcasts 10. He also ran his own freelance production work from October 2020 through early 2024, directing shoots with crews of up to 20 people on budgets up to $5,000 10.
He joined buildspace in March 2024 as a filmmaker and growth lead 10. In six months, he grew the Nights & Weekends program from 30,000 to 75,000 participants, helped launch an AI platform called Sage from zero to 100,000 users, and grew buildspace's Instagram account from 85,000 to 235,000 followers — accumulating 10 million views on Instagram, 3 million on X, and 100,000 on YouTube 1011.
After buildspace closed, Blumenstein moved to Founders, Inc. in October 2024 as Head of Programs & Storytelling 1015. A December 2025 Tech Times article on the trend of AI startups hiring in-house filmmakers profiled his transition, citing it as an example of companies bringing creative work in-house rather than outsourcing to agencies 11. In May 2025, he posted a job listing for a full-time filmmaker at f.inc, offering $100K–$150K plus carry in the fund 12. Julia Fedorin, who subsequently worked at f.inc as a filmmaker before joining Shopify, described the experience of working alongside Blumenstein at the Fort Mason campus 19.
Dante Lentini: TikTok, sneaker conventions, and growth
Lentini attended NYU Tandon School of Engineering but left college to pursue startups 1314. His early career centered on sneaker culture and social media: he built The Site Supply, a TikTok account about sneaker reselling that grew to 250,000 followers, and from 2022 to 2024 he was part of the six-person team behind Got Sole, a sneaker convention series that ran 58 events across cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and London 1320.
In 2021, Lentini joined Hyper as a founding product team member 13. Hyper was a YC-backed startup that combined Discord community management with Stripe-based monetization, raised $17M from Y Combinator, Stripe, and General Catalyst, and was acquired by Whop.com in 2023 13.
He joined buildspace in a growth role in 2024 and transitioned to Founders, Inc. as Head of Growth in October 2024 after buildspace's closure 1315. At f.inc he describes himself as "a Growth Hacker" whose path — leaving college, making TikToks, joining startups — led him to San Francisco 14.
The shared building
The transition was made physically seamless by the fact that buildspace and Founders, Inc. occupied the same Fort Mason campus 16. Buildspace opened its physical space at 2 Marina Blvd, Building B, Suite 200 in July 2023; f.inc had been renting space in the same building since 2022 16. When buildspace closed, f.inc expanded into the vacated space, eventually operating a 42,000 sq ft campus from the building 416. The four employees did not need to relocate — they walked from one side of a building they already knew to the other.
Furqan Rydhan's fund had also been an investor in buildspace's $10M Series A in November 2022, so the organizational relationship predated the personnel one 16. The transition brought buildspace's community-building DNA — cohort programs, IRL events, social media storytelling — into a venture firm that had historically operated as an investment-first operation 48.
By April 2026, the four former buildspace employees held senior positions across f.inc's core functions: Patel as Creative Director and Partner shaping narrative and program design, Lakatos on the investment team writing checks into AI and hardware founders, Blumenstein running programs and in-house content production, and Lentini leading growth 155.