Today I launched Straiker's Series A. Career bucket list: ✅ officially checked. Ankur and I go way back, since our days together at RedLock. When he started building Straiker and came calling in early 2025 (before stealth launch ‼️ ), going all in was an easy decision. When most people were still asking "𝙝𝙤𝙬 𝙞𝙨 𝘼𝙄 𝙜𝙤𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙣𝙜𝙚 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙡𝙙?" I started seeing friends pick up Claude Code and build things. Developers shipping more and faster than ever, with AI as their co-pilot. Now I'm the one building agents to handle my own repetitive marketing work, getting 3-4x more done. But with every new agent and every new capability, the attack surface is widened. That's why Straiker's here. I knew this launch had to be felt, not just announced. We secured an Axios exclusive (shout to Shannon Van Every). Got the team on the Nasdaq tower in Times Square and filmed the founders video right there (Check out Ankur's page!). And we had investors who showed up like true partners: Lightspeed and Bain Capital Ventures (BCV) made the Nasdaq connection happen, Citi Ventures activated their own PR team to work alongside ours, Illuminate Financial and Rain Capital in the trenches on the weekend to amplify the announcement, Marathon Management Partners reached out to their media contacts and brought ideas that sharpened the whole launch. Getting there means you get sh!t done. Late nights, long weekends, rolling up your sleeves, working lockstep with leadership team. Fueled by love for this work and, honestly, by the belief that you can always do more than people expect. And then you stand in Times Square with the people you've been in the trenches with, and it all lands. Grateful. Proud. Excited. And just know there's more to come. 😉 Sreenath Kurupati | Chenxi Wang, Ph.D. | Yizheng Wang | Girish Chandrasekar | Parth Shah | Tessa Cohen | James A. Beasley | Allison Braley | Josh Machiz | Michael B. Gilroy | Gokul Rajaram | Jelena Zec | Venkata Sai Kishore Modalavalasa | Peter Hung | Phimm Phonpaseuth