Justin DiRaddo

Justin DiRaddo is a Senior at Boston University with a background in Finance and Entrepreneurship. Originally from Upstate NY, Justin grew up in a family of restaurateurs who were constantly spinning up new recipes and business ideas. A lot of his early ambitions were focused on the restaurant industry and how family-operated businesses could compete with the larger cost-leaders that benefited from economies of scale. This led Justin to attend BU and explore what a career in business might look like.

Just like any freshman does, Justin tried out a bunch of different clubs on campus. The one that quickly stood out was the Finance & Investment Club, which helped educate undergraduates about valuation, markets, and how to break into wall street. During this time, Justin met another student named Kevin Tang who was building a restroom hardware venture named Cleana (f.k.a CleanSeat). Together with Kevin, Justin engaged in customer discovery and received critical industry feedback while also attaining market validation through beta-testing approval partners such as TD-Garden, Boston University, Harvard, 7-Eleven, Boston City Hall, etc. In addition, he worked with the early Cleana team to generate a go-to-market strategy and raise its first funding round.

Since his time with Cleana, Justin has worked at two investment banks. At Momentum Cyber, Justin drafted in-depth market research reports on the Cybersecurity industry, highlighting macroeconomic trends throughout the sector such as emerging technologies, up-and-coming unicorns, and recent large-scale cyber breaches. At Raymond James, he worked on several sell-side M&A deal processes for companies in the tech & services sector with Enterprise Values of over $250M – as well as a $3B+ buy-side engagement.

Returning for his Senior year, Justin has decided to sink back into the entrepreneurial projects that excite him most. Justin hosts a podcast named “heyfounded” which has interviewed several Ignite speakers. The show is for aspiring entrepreneurs, founders, and startups and is dedicated to delivering top stories, news, and insights on the greater Boston startup/venture capital space. In addition, Justin is working on another venture alongside BU alum to address the negative impacts of phone addiction. They aspire to create the first scalable screentime tool that effectively reduces excess usage for its users – giving them back more meaningful time in their days.

Justin has a huge passion for Boston-based ventures and is excited to emcee IDEA CON 2023