she/her · uwaterloo '30

hey.
i'm Baran.

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Former GTM Engineer at Decora, Finance & Strategy Analyst at KKC Classroom, and Growth & Strategy Analyst at Sema — now back at Waterloo studying management engineering and scouting startups for Waterloo Venture Group. i build AI agents, do cold outreach for fun, and have accidentally made LinkedIn a bigger part of my life than expected.

Baran Nasiri
about

Currently working on

Baran Nasiri

management engineering student at UWaterloo who gets restless when something could be automated but isn't. i keep ending up in roles that don't have a clean job title, which honestly suits me fine.

outside of school: the gym is consistent, LinkedIn is taking up more headspace than expected, and there's always some project running in the background that may or may not go anywhere.

building right now
  • sourcing and evaluating early-stage startups for Waterloo Venture Group
  • AI tools that save teams real time
  • growth systems that run without constant intervention
constants
  • early gym sessions
  • LinkedIn content that actually lands
  • learning what i don't know yet
currently learning
  • financial modeling and valuation
  • Python, SQL, and automation
  • venture diligence that actually holds up
always thinking about
  • where fitness and technology actually overlap
  • what makes a startup worth betting on
  • how to build things people actually use
toolkit
  • financial modeling, DCF, valuation, market sizing
  • Python, SQL, Pandas, scikit-learn, Excel/VBA
  • GTM strategy, competitive analysis, due diligence
  • AI workflow & reporting automation
work

Experience

Decora Powder Coatings Ltd. May 2026 – Aug 2026
GTM Engineer · St. Catharines, ON
  • Built and segmented a 150+ account commercial pipeline and sourced 290 prospects, helping land 86 booked meetings, 83 quote requests, and 24 closed sales through lead qualification, decision-maker research, and opportunity prioritization
  • Sized up 20+ competitors and substitutes across 6+ dimensions — pricing, positioning, capabilities, segments, market gaps — and turned it into North American market-sizing, ICP, pricing, and launch recommendations
  • Built reporting workflows tracking 10+ commercial KPIs across pipeline conversion, campaign performance, prospect activity, and customer feedback to keep 150+ target accounts prioritized
  • Designed AI-enabled onboarding and documentation workflows that cut manual processing by 60%+, while shipping 20+ sales, product, and marketing assets across catalogs, web content, collateral, and internal systems
KKC Classroom Jan 2026 – Apr 2026
Finance & Strategy Analyst · Toronto, ON
  • Built 10+ financial models and stress-tested 25+ pricing, revenue, and operating scenarios across 3+ business cases — conversion, unit economics, cost structure, monetization, the whole picture
  • Benchmarked 20+ competing platforms across 7 strategic dimensions and turned it into 12+ recommendations for differentiation and growth
  • Built reporting frameworks tracking 15+ financial and operating KPIs (acquisition, conversion, retention, engagement, revenue), producing 10+ analytical reports for product, pricing, and resource-allocation calls
  • Synthesized 150+ market, customer, and financial data points into 8+ strategy analyses on new offerings, expansion, and competitive positioning — for a platform connected to professionals across 50+ leading firms
Sema Sep 2025 – Dec 2025
Growth & Strategy Analyst · Toronto, ON
  • Dug into acquisition, engagement, and conversion data across a 25K+ user platform, segmenting audiences into 5+ groups to find growth pockets in tech, startups, finance, and AI
  • Generated 270K+ LinkedIn impressions in 2 weeks by running 20+ growth experiments on positioning, distribution timing, audience targeting, and content iteration
  • Built 5+ AI-assisted research and personalization workflows for prospecting, qualification, and outbound testing across 4+ customer segments
  • Tracked 10+ acquisition and engagement KPIs and turned 15+ campaign iterations into recommendations on positioning, targeting, and growth resourcing
leadership
Waterloo Venture Group Sep 2026 – Present
Venture Scout · Waterloo, ON
  • Source and evaluate 10+ early-stage companies across fintech, AI, SaaS, and tech, screening against 6+ investment criteria — market size, traction, business model, scalability, positioning, execution risk
  • Dig into company and industry research across 5+ sectors, building investment takes using 8+ financial and operating factors: revenue models, unit economics, CAC, fundraising strategy, market attractiveness, growth potential
GymVision 2025
Head of Content · Stealth Startup
  • Led content strategy across 2 major social platforms, generating 40M+ organic views in a single month through high-velocity creative testing and trend chasing
  • Turned those views into roughly 13K+ users, building an early-stage acquisition engine through 30+ content experiments in funnel optimization and audience targeting
education

Education

University of Waterloo
Bachelor of Applied Science · Management Engineering
Waterloo, Ontario · 2025 – Present · Co-op Program
side projects

Side Projects

ongoing
started posting on LinkedIn, now it's become a real thing

3,000+ followers. posting about GTM, engineering, and startups. more drafts than posts.

ongoing
training consistently

the gym is a non-negotiable at this point. fitness is a big part of how i think and work.

done
turned 40M+ organic views into a 13K+ user acquisition engine

content strategy for a stealth startup. turns out virality and retention are very different games.

done
brought a first-of-its-kind North American product to market

no existing playbook. built the go-to-market strategy from scratch at Decora.

ongoing
cold outreach and startup conversations

talking to founders, operators, and builders. low response rate, high learning rate.

in progress
building to 500K on Instagram — startups, engineering, and GTM

documenting the process of building, learning, and figuring things out in public.

follow ↗
take a break

Take a Break

the daily run

dodge the red flags. collect the good stuff. tap or press space to jump.

score: 0
best: 0

tap canvas / press space / click to jump

want to build
something cool?
let's talk.

open to opportunities, startup convos, growth experiments, or just someone interested in AI, growth, fitness, or building something.