The Builder Behind the Idea

Jeremy Greenberg doesn’t describe himself as a natural entrepreneur. In fact, he kind of bristles at the label.

He wasn’t running lemonade stands or flipping sneakers in high school. And when he tells the story of how he got here—founder of Crowdwave, a fast-growing AI research platform—it’s clear that this wasn’t some preordained path. It was a series of pivots, partnerships, and well-timed leaps.

“I’ve always been more of an operator than an innovator,” Jeremy says. “I’m not the guy who comes up with the next sliced bread. But I have experience running a business.”

That clarity—knowing what lane he thrives in—has been the throughline of his career.

Jeremy started at Capital One in a high-responsibility role right out of college, managing a P&L and leading a team. From there, he went to Wharton for his MBA with the idea of exploring entrepreneurship. But he didn’t walk out of school with a killer startup idea. Instead, he partnered with a professor on one venture. Then a local founder on another. He was testing for fit. He wanted to find someone with the spark, so he could bring the structure.

The first real fit came when he met a personal trainer with a product concept in fitness. The trainer didn’t know how to scale a business. Jeremy thought he could help.

Together, they launched Flyte Fitness, a company that sold a unique piece of home workout equipment. They licensed the product to a media company that specialized in direct-to-consumer sales through Amazon and TV. It wasn’t a unicorn exit, but it was a real business. And for Jeremy, it was proof.

“That was the first time I’d built something outside of a big company,” he says. “I raised money. Built a team. Dealt with a product development process and learned how to manage the complex supply chain. I learned what it meant to run a company when the buck actually stops with you.”

But like many early-stage products, Flyte Fitness had its highs and lows. The team landed a few big gym partners early on and thought they’d struck gold. But the sales cycles dragged. Momentum slowed. The optimism wore thin.

“You get humbled pretty fast,” Jeremy says. “You realize that excitement doesn’t always translate to purchase orders.”

So, while running Flyte Fitness, he kept working. He consulted for tech companies. Took on operating roles. And eventually launched his own research firm, Avenue Group, focused on fast-turnaround market diligence for private equity and VC firms.

The work lit him up.

“I love learning,” he says. “Getting to dive deep into new industries, new customers, and new problems—it was the most fun I’d had and my clients were happy with the work.”

That curiosity is what set the foundation for Crowdwave.

A few years into running Avenue Group, Jeremy took a full-time role at DraftKings, leading product analytics and research. At first, he said no to the offer—he had clients, a business, a rhythm. But after a month-long consulting engagement, he saw how dynamic the work was and jumped in full-time. “It was a new challenge. I wanted to be inside a fast-growing tech company and see how it really worked.”

The experience gave him range—and showed him what he missed about being a founder. So in 2023, he left and started experimenting again.

This time, the idea wasn’t someone else’s. It came from a podcast.

Jeremy had started diving into generative AI and came across a conversation with Harvard Business School professor Dr. Iyelet Israeli. She’d run experiments using GPT-3.5 to simulate consumer preferences—brand sensitivity, price anchoring, lifestyle biases—and Jeremy was hooked.

“I listened to that podcast five times in a row,” he says. “I even made my mom listen to it while visiting during Thanksgiving.”

It sparked a question: what if you could simulate a target audience, ask it questions, and get near-instant feedback—without running surveys, interviews, or focus groups?

He hired up an AI innovation consultant from a large tech firm. Partnered with Wharton to secure an AI academic advisor. And started prototyping.

A few months later, Crowdwave was born.

The platform uses generative AI to create simulated audience agents with defined psychographics, behaviors, and demographics. Brands can use it to test messaging, gauge sentiment, explore new markets, and track reactions to creative assets—in real time.

“Traditional research is expensive, time-consuming, and limited in scope,” Jeremy says. “Crowdwave makes it faster, cheaper, and more dynamic.”

One of the earliest hurdles was the “recency gap”—LLMs trained on data that cuts off in 2023 couldn’t react to current events. That made them unusable for PR, policy, or political campaigns.

So the team fixed it.

“We built real-time capability into our models,” Jeremy says. “Now if there’s a major market drop or a breaking news story, our simulated audiences know about it. That was a huge unlock—and a big differentiator.”

Crowdwave has since raised a seed round. The team includes a mix of technical experts, policy advisors, and strategists—all equity holders.

But Jeremy’s role hasn’t changed. He’s still the operator. Still the one making sure things get done. Still the guy who knows where to put the structure.

“I don’t need to be the visionary,” he says. “I just need to make the vision work.”

That self-awareness—that refusal to fake a role he doesn’t play—might be the most underrated part of his success. Jeremy never tried to be the idea guy. He just found the right ideas and built teams to bring them to life.

Because being underestimated doesn’t mean being overlooked.

Sometimes, it means knowing exactly where you belong—and building from there.

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