Six-Time Founder Yianni Kellis Has Partnered With More Than 65 AI Founders at Thinkk in the Past Year

CHICAGO, USA, October 27th, 2026, FinanceWire

The Chicago-based operator helps early-stage AI companies launch through Thinkk, while building executive brands through FameBoost.

Yianni Kellis, the six-time founder and Venture Partner at Thinkk, has partnered with more than 65 founders over the past twelve months to help grow their AI startups. Kellis also leads FameBoost, an executive branding firm that helps accomplished professionals turn their expertise into recognised personal brands.

The two businesses serve different clients, but they share a common thread. Both are built around the hardest moment in any venture, the stretch where an idea or a reputation has to earn trust before it can grow.

Helping AI Startups Get Off the Ground

Thinkk is a startup studio that specialises in launching AI startups quickly and effectively. It works at the intersection of capital and counsel, advising early-stage founders and investing alongside that advice, a structure that ties its success directly to the companies it supports.

Kellis describes the past year simply. “In the last 12 months, I’ve partnered with 65+ founders at Thinkk to fuel the growth of their AI startups,” he writes on his LinkedIn profile.

His value to those founders comes from experience rather than theory. Most investors come to early-stage companies after building one business that worked. Kellis has founded six. That repetition gives him a clear sense of where young companies usually stumble, from early positioning and go-to-market to the trust that has to be built with customers, partners and investors before growth can take hold.

Founders who have worked with him point to that practical edge. One, Alfredo Carranza, wrote in a LinkedIn recommendation that his team had cycled through three marketing consultants before working with Kellis, and called his approach “a game-changer.”

Turning Expertise Into Recognition

FameBoost applies the same thinking to people. The firm helps executives, founders and advisors transform their expertise into powerful personal brands that attract high-value consulting, speaking and partnership opportunities. Its stated aim, in Kellis’s words, is transforming Fortune 500 executives into household names.

The logic connecting FameBoost to Thinkk is straightforward. Deals, talent and capital increasingly flow toward recognisable names, and that recognition is now shaped as much by search results and AI answers as by reputation in the room. For an executive with decades of experience, being hard to find online has become a real competitive disadvantage. FameBoost exists to close that gap, building profiles and systems that keep its clients visible even when they are offline.

Kellis divides his time between Chicago and Athens, Greece, giving him a working view of both the fast pace of the American startup ecosystem and the longer, relationship-driven rhythm of European and Mediterranean business. He holds a master’s degree from Bayes Business School in London.

With more than 65 founders supported in a single year, and executives building their profiles through FameBoost, Kellis is building two businesses around one belief, that credibility, whether for a company or a person, is something that can be built deliberately.

About Yianni Kellis

Yianni Kellis is a six-time founder based in Chicago and Athens. He is Venture Partner at Thinkk, a startup studio that helps founders launch and grow AI startups, and leads FameBoost, an executive branding firm that helps accomplished professionals build recognised personal brands. More information is available at thinkk.com and fameboost.com.

Contact