A $125,000 check from an angel investor group is a vote of confidence. For GreenSight Technologies, the Cal Poly-born startup that won the AngelCon 2025 competition, it is a bet on a specific, unglamorous choke point in the circular economy: the IT asset disposition, or ITAD, warehouse [Recycling Today, May 2025].
Here, decommissioned servers, laptops, and networking gear arrive by the pallet. The job is to sort, test, erase, grade, and route each piece for resale, parts harvesting, or recycling. It is a manual, data-poor, and margin-sensitive process. GreenSight's founders, Jake Daniels, Diego Curiel, and Mackenzie Kettwig, are betting that a layer of intelligent software can make it faster and more valuable [Recycling Today, May 2025].
The Facility-Level Wedge
GreenSight is not building another generic recommerce marketplace. Its wedge is facility-level automation. The company's mobile app, GreenSight Tech, and its backend systems are designed to integrate directly into the physical workflow of an ITAD operation [Apple App Store]. The goal is to give technicians and managers real-time tools at the point of intake and processing.
Key surfaces include a "Scan-For-Value" tool for device identification and pricing, and an AI-powered "Quote Engine" for generating resale offers [maxineancheta.com, 2025][PRLog]. The differentiation rests on understanding domain-specific steps like data-erasure compliance and component grading, processes a generic warehouse management system would miss [Recycling Today, May 2025]. The promise is increased throughput, better data capture, and standardized decision-making to maximize recovery value from each piece of hardware [Crunchbase].
A Team Forged in the Classroom
The company's origins are academic. It was born from a senior project at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo [Mustang News]. Jake Daniels serves as CEO, Diego Curiel as Chief Technology Officer, and Mackenzie Kettwig as Secretary [Cal Poly CIE SBDC, May 2025][Equilar ExecAtlas][bizprofile.net].
| Role | Name | Note |
|---|---|---|
| CEO | Jake Daniels | Co-founder from Palo Alto, CA [Cal Poly CIE SBDC] |
| CTO | Diego Curiel | Co-founder from Santa Barbara, CA [Cal Poly CIE SBDC] |
| Secretary | Mackenzie Kettwig | Co-founder from Colfax, CA [Cal Poly CIE SBDC] |
Early Traction and the First Customer
For a company founded in 2024, tangible milestones are few but pointed. The $125,000 investment from the AngelCon investor group is the sole disclosed funding round [Recycling Today, May 2025]. More concretely, GreenSight has announced its first customer: URT, a national electronics recycling and ITAD firm, is using the company's Quote Engine [Recycling Today, May 2025].
The Skeptic's Case
The bet is clear, but the path is narrow. GreenSight is entering a specialized corner of the logistics and recycling industry.
- Niche competition. The startup positions itself against generic software, but established ITAD operators often use homegrown systems or deeply customized versions of broader warehouse management platforms.
- Sales complexity. Selling automation software into industrial facilities is a high-touch, long-cycle enterprise sale.
- Feature depth vs. speed. The company must move quickly with limited capital to prove its automation delivers a clear ROI on labor and recovery value.
The Next Twelve Months
The capital from AngelCon is runway. The next milestones are predictable: convert the URT pilot into a multi-year contract, sign two to three additional facility customers, and demonstrate measurable improvements in processing speed or asset recovery value. The company will likely need to return to investors within 12-18 months for a seed round to scale beyond early adopters.