Elena BrandtFounder

United States - Tallahassee, Florida

After working in science and big tech over in Russia, I moved to the U.S. and pursued my dream of getting a graduate degree in social psychology. While working on my Ph.D., I saw a pressing need for non-Western samples in behavioral research. My background at Yandex (particularly with crowdsourced data annotation at Toloka AI) helped me come up with a software solution. In 2023, I founded Besample—a behavioral data marketplace that empowers research beyond the West.

As of early 2025, Besample is recognized by over 1000 scholars at the world's leading universities. Researchers use it to collect data from a diverse set of world populations otherwise unavailable for research. Our mission is to help scientists hear the previously unheard voices of people in remote corners of the world (I come from one such corner). Besample is a Techstars alum, a Web Summit'24 select Beta-track startup, and one of Pepperdine's top-100 Most Fundable Companies in 2024. We have another milestone to share soon; stay tuned!

I'm a proud mom tech entrepreneur raising four little ones. My youngest—baby Darwin—has been the first Techstars baby resident ever. Apparently, he also became the first YC Female Founders Conference baby attendee in 2024, which accidentally made him famous on LinkedIn and featured in national and international media before he even turned 1 😁