Richard Gotlieb — Co-Founder & CEO
Richard founded OnGuardAI after a personal family experience revealed how even bright, capable people can be manipulated by modern scams. As CEO, he combines that lived motivation with decades of experience building and scaling customer-focused technology companies.
Previously, Richard served as COO of Localcoin, a global Bitcoin ATM company, and as VP & General Manager at Blackhawk Network, a global branded payments leader with 4,000+ employees worldwide. Earlier in his career, he founded FundStream, where he scaled the company into a leader in gift card distribution.
Richard also led the research behind OnGuardAI’s human-centered design, personally interviewing more than 100 seniors and scam victims to understand real-world scam tactics. These insights guide product decisions, partner strategy, and communications with families. He has also recruited industry advisors and partners to accelerate adoption among banks, telcos and senior organizations.
Above all, Richard’s focus is to make protection easy, respectful and reliable for seniors and their families. He is deeply committed to privacy and to building a service families can trust when it matters most.
Zennet Wheatcroft — Co-Founder & CTO
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​Zennet co-founded OnGuardAI to apply his deep expertise in artificial intelligence to one of society's most urgent challenges: protecting people from scams. With more than 20 years of experience across eight startups, including five venture-backed companies, he brings both technical depth and entrepreneurial discipline to the mission.
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Before OnGuardAI, Zennet held early engineering roles at Indeed.com and led data and AI initiatives at Atypon (acquired for $120M) and Quark AI. Over the past decade, he has specialized in large-scale AI and data architecture, building secure, high-performance SaaS systems and leading distributed engineering teams across multiple continents.
At OnGuardAI, Zennet oversees all aspects of product architecture and machine learning. He focuses on translating complex data and language models into practical, real-world protection for seniors and families. His background in AI-driven workflow automation and document intelligence informs the company’s ability to detect evolving scam tactics with speed and precision.
Zennet is committed to using technology responsibly, to create systems that are transparent, reliable, and worthy of the trust of every family OnGuardAI protects.