Ex-Stratton Oakmont Partner Launches AI Job Platform for Ex-Cons

Richard Bronson, a former partner at the infamous brokerage Stratton Oakmont who later served time in federal prison, has launched Commissary Club — an AI-powered employment platform built specifically for people with criminal records. The startup was selected for TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield 200, held at TechCrunch Disrupt October 13-15 in San Francisco.

Bronson's backstory reads like a cautionary tale from the era the "Wolf of Wall Street" made famous. In the 1980s he worked at Stratton Oakmont, the corruption-riddled brokerage run by Jordan Belfort, whose story became a 2013 film. The firm collapsed in the mid-1990s under the weight of misconduct accusations. Bronson left after a year and built his own firm in South Florida — until the law caught up with him.

"I built a $100 million business taking these small cap companies public," Bronson told TechCrunch. "Some of the success, however, came through breaking the law — securities laws — and ultimately, as I knew inevitably would happen, I had to pay the price. I lost everything, and most significantly, my freedom. And I was sent to federal prison for a couple of years."

What does reentry actually look like for a founder with a record?

Bronson says his own post-prison experience shaped the product directly. Despite his education and work experience, employers wouldn't touch him.

"Nobody would hire me, despite all of my education and work experience and everything else. I was like completely radioactive," he said.

That friction is the market. Commissary Club uses AI to guide formerly incarcerated users through the maze of finding employment, housing and benefits after release. The name comes from the store inside a prison where inmates buy snacks and toiletries — a deliberate nod to the community it serves.

"I could not help but notice how little assistance was available to people coming out of prison," said Bronson. "If it was this bad for me, what about the guys I was in prison with who had very little education and very little job experience? What were their chances?"

The platform isn't just a jobs board. Bronson describes it as "almost like Facebook," where users find work, housing help and access to benefits — plus something harder to quantify.

"They find the other missing ingredient that's existentially important to them that isn't satisfied elsewhere. They find community," he said. The site also appears primed to become a referral network, and it offers users a way to find dates.

Who's building it, and what's the business model?

The team is just two people: Bronson and co-founder Roman Kissin, whom Bronson calls the technical mind, or "the brains," behind the project. Kissin previously worked at eBay and IBM and served as CTO of LexisNexis between 2022 and 2025, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The pricing is freemium, and the paid tier is where it gets interesting. Users get the first 10 applications free, then pay $149 for a bundle of 10 more — or $14.99 each, Bronson told TechCrunch. Think of it as roughly the cost of a movie ticket per application, aimed at a population that often has little cash on hand after release. Some may balk at a for-profit model serving this community, and for people fresh out of prison, it may be a tough sell.

Bronson doesn't apologize for the structure.

"People immediately assume, 'Oh, is this a nonprofit?' And the answer is no," he said. "There's a strong mission component, certainly. And I have devoted my life, when I came out of prison, to helping my brothers and sisters with records. Part of it is because I just felt so remorseful for the shit that I had done. I still wake up every day regretting choices I made."

A market nobody wants, or one nobody serves?

The commercial logic is blunt: a large, underserved population that almost no competitor targets.

"But we're going after a huge, huge market that nobody — I mean nobody — does anything about," said Bronson. "People talk about AI taking away employment and people losing jobs. I look at it differently. We're building AI that creates employment for people that society left behind."

For practitioners watching this space, Commissary Club is a bet that AI-driven reentry services can scale where nonprofits haven't — and that a founder who's lived the problem can sell into a market other operators won't touch. The Disrupt stage appearance in October will be its first real test in front of investors.