Team

Adam is the Founder and Managing Partner at Struck. Before Struck, he was a Co-Founder of Long Island Brand Beverages, a CPG company acquired by Cullen Investments and taken public on the NASDAQ. 

Earlier in his career, Adam was an M&A/PE attorney at Kirkland & Ellis, one of the largest law firms in the world. He has also been recognized for his work by Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List for Venture Capital and was also named Business Insider’s Rising Stars in Venture Capital.

Adam is a proud member of The Young Presidents Organization (YPO), an influential and world-renowned business networking organization composed of chief executives.

Adam graduated from Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management, and Georgetown Law, and originally hails from South Africa.

Andrew is the Chief Operating Officer at Struck. Prior to Struck Studio, Andrew was the Global Director of Innovation & Digital Ventures at AB-InBev, the world’s largest brewer, where he led the company’s first technology incubator and launched an in-house consumer digital product studio.

Earlier in his career, Andrew was a consultant for Deloitte’s Innovation Strategy practice with a focus on design thinking, innovation portfolio management, and corporate venture capital.  He has also been recognized for his work by Forbes’ 30 Under 30 List for Marketing & Advertising.  

Andrew graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Cognitive Science and Philosophy, Politics, & Economics (PPE).

Brian is a Principal Engineer at Struck.

Prior to joining Struck, Brian joined Rainforest as a Software Architect to help bring their early-stage payments-as-a-service platform to life. During his 20+ years in the industry, Brian has led numerous engineering teams in Director and VP of Engineering roles, including ShootProof, CrowdTwist, and Schematic. He has remained hands on with code and infrastructure while also building and leading strong engineering teams. In addition, Brian has presented at numerous technical conferences and user group meetings.

Brian holds a Bachelors of Business Administration in Computer Information Systems from Baruch College, City University of New York.

Chaz is a Product Designer at Struck.

Christian is an Associate at Struck. Prior to Struck, Christian served as the Director of Special Projects for Russell Wilson, where he helped strategize and build across different business endeavors and partnerships within the football star’s ecosystem.

Before that, Christian started his career in Southeast Asia as an Investment Associate for Henry Nguyen’s family office, Phoenix Holdings. While there, he spent his time leading research and competitive analysis on the rapidly developing Vietnamese market. Christian uses his wide-range of experiences to help bring value in building disruptive businesses here at Struck Studio.

Christian graduated from Harvard University, where he also played point guard for the men’s basketball team.

Christofer is a Software Engineer at Struck, specializing in web development across various technologies. Self-taught and continually driven by new challenges, Christofer has built a diverse portfolio of projects that showcase his commitment to innovation and best practices.

Prior to joining Struck Studio, Christofer was instrumental in developing and enhancing a Ruby on Rails-based e-commerce application for tree sales, managing both frontend and backend aspects. He led the design and deployment of a custom static website generator using Python, YAML, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which he later enhanced with ReactJS for greater efficiency. Furthermore, Christofer spearheaded the migration of a major website to a modern tech stack utilizing Gatsby and Contentful, focusing on optimizing performance and scalability.

Most recently, he served as the Frontend Lead Developer for a healthcare startup, where he managed a platform powered by AWS microservices, including Cognito, AppConfig, and Chime. This platform was pivotal in device tracking and integration with MDM services within the healthcare sector.

Don is a Principal at Struck. Prior to Struck, Don was a product manager at Lyft, where he built a business case for a car rental product and helped scale Lyft Rentals from zero to over $10M in annual run rate bookings. He led Lyft Rentals through the launch of an integrated product with Hertz, bringing the business to nationwide scale and gross margin profitability. He also led the buildout of various building blocks of the Rentals business, including growth strategy, financial infrastructure, data pipelines, and machine learning-driven risk assessment.

Before Lyft, Don was an investor at Sapphire Ventures focused on growth stage enterprise software. Earlier in his career, Don had investment banking and equity sales roles at Jefferies and UBS.

Don graduated from Yale with a degree in Economics and International Studies.

Gordon is the Chief Product & Design Officer at Struck. Prior to Struck, Gordon was a design leader at Lyft for multiple consumer-facing teams. He specialized in zero to one initiatives, leading design and product strategy across redesigns of the Lyft app, building the physical and digital experiences for Lyft Rentals, and exploring new verticals.

As a self taught designer, he believes mentorship is an essential part of a team’s growth. To this end, he started and grew the Lyft Product Design mentorship program to over 100 participants. In this same vein, he also served as a Design Mentor at Andreessen Horowitz for multiple years prior to joining the Struck team.

Earlier in his career Gordon worked across art and technology. He was the first designer at Kamcord, a consumer mobile application acquired by Lyft Inc.

Gordon graduated from U.C. San Diego.

Jack is the Head of Go-to-Market at Struck.

In his role, Jack helps our portfolio companies get from Concept to Seed faster by building and executing their go-to-market strategies and business models. He focuses on implementing scalable processes, prioritizing product-market-fit, and identifying the proper distribution channels to unlock growth and achieve results faster. 

Prior to Struck, Jack was Head of Business Development at Simply Framed, where he was responsible for all aspects of revenue growth. 

Before Simply Framed, Jack was the VP of Sales at Trellis Research, a Los Angeles-based legal tech startup. He spent the first ten years of his career on Wall Street at CreditSights (acquired by Fitch Group), where he held a variety of roles across sales and account management 

Jack received a BA in History from Trinity College in Hartford, CT.

Joice Pantig is the Executive Assistant supporting the Struck Studio team.

Prior to joining Struck, Joice has held positions as an Executive Assistant for several other top organizations.

Justin is a Senior Associate at Struck. Prior to Struck, Justin was an Associate at Pegasus Tech Ventures, a leading corporate venture capital firm. At Pegasus, Justin performed due diligence, supported portfolio companies, and worked closely with corporate partners on their strategic initiatives.

Prior to Pegasus Tech Ventures, Justin spent time as an Account Executive at ColorTokens, a cybersecurity startup.

Justin graduated with a BS from San Diego State University.

Lauren is the Public Relations Advisor to Struck and Founder of Outlier Partners where she works with tech startups and corporations on PR strategy.

Previously, she co-founded Moxie Communications Group, one of the leading tech-focused PR firms with offices in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. At Moxie, Lauren focused on consumer tech, e-commerce, lifestyle, and fashion. Her clients included Dollar Shave Club, Tradesy and Casper, among many others. 

Prior to co-founding Moxie, she served as an editorial stylist and creative consultant for world-class magazines including W, GQ, Vanity Fair, Time, and Vogue.

Lauren graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Luiz Borro is an AI & Machine Learning Engineer at Struck Studio.

Before joining Struck, Luiz worked at Claro, a major telecom in Brazil, creating data-centric solutions to enhance the customer experience in the company’s digital products. He also has experience in bioinformatics, having developed machine learning-based methods for drug and agrochemical design.Luiz holds a doctorate in Genetics and Molecular Biology from Unicamp, one of the leading research universities in Latin America.

Mariano is a software engineer at Struck.

Prior to Struck, Mariano worked at Aidence and Wildlife Studios where he focused on software design and infrastructure.  Mariano also currently teaches at Coderhouse and has over a decade of experience as a calculus and algebra assistant professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

Mariano earned a Master of Science degree in Physics and is currently pursuing an MSc in Statistics at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Marty is a Principal at Struck. Prior to Struck, Marty served as Director of Partner Strategy and Expansion at Metropolis Technologies, an advanced computer vision platform transforming mobile commerce across real estate. In this role, Marty managed critical enterprise partnerships while helping the firm build and expand relationships with institutional real estate partners.

Before Metropolis, Marty was Co-Founder of Accel Robotics, an AI and computer vision technology startup he helped build and scale. At Accel, Marty worked closely with leadership to raise over $55 million of strategic capital, develop the company’s corporate strategy, and forge commercial partnerships with global brands, retailers, and real estate developers.

As a Principal at Struck Studio, Marty leverages his operating background spanning advanced technologies and strategic partnerships to help build and scale transformative businesses.

Marty graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Linguistics.

Michael is both the Co-Founder and CTO of Struck Studio and a General Partner at Struck Capital. 

Prior to joining Struck, Michael served as founder and Chief Technology Officer at four startups, all of which have been acquired for a total of over $500M. His most recent exits were with Resy (acq. American Express) and CrowdTwist (acq. Oracle Corporation). The acquisition of Resy brought him to American Express where he served as the Vice President of Global Mobile and Web Engineering before moving to Struck.

With experience that spans his past as an entrepreneur, operator, investor, advisor, and board member, Michael brings unparalleled insight and technological expertise to the Struck team. He also holds a degree in computer science and mathematics from New York University and has been honored with the Crain’s NY Business Hispanic Executive and Entrepreneur Tech Innovator Award.

Rochelle Alejo is the Executive Assistant supporting the Struck Capital team.

Prior to joining Struck, Rochelle has held positions as an Executive Assistant for several other top organizations.

Romina is the Lead Web Engineer at Struck.

Prior to Struck, she worked as a Senior Frontend Engineer at Dealroom.co, a leading European venture capital & startup database used by many of the top VCs, corporates, and governments around the world. In 2022 she was featured in EQUALS, a campaign highlighting the top 50 women in tech in Amsterdam, where she currently lives.

Earlier in her career Romina worked as a UX and Graphic Designer for companies from across all sectors.

Romina attended Edinburgh University where she also worked curating movies for the Edinburgh International Film Festival during the summer.

Sam is the Director of Portfolio Support at Struck. Prior to Struck, he served as Co-Founder and CEO of dot.LA, a VC-backed media company focused on the Southern California tech ecosystem that had a successful exit in early 2024.

Sam has extensive experience as a founder, operator, consultant, and investor. He began his career as an analyst at Activate, a NYC-based boutique strategy consultancy, where he worked with a wide range of blue-chip firms in the media and technology space.

Sam graduated with high honors from Harvard University and holds an MBA from the University of Southern California.

Shivan is an Operating Partner for Product at Struck.  Shivan has 2 decades of experience working in business to business enterprise SaaS businesses building and iterating towards product market fit.  He has instantiated and / or grown the product function at many startups, experiencing several acquisitions, numerous funding rounds, and 1 IPO.

In addition to Struck, Shivan is currently the Head of Enterprise Platform at AuditBoard.  Prior to AuditBoard, Shivan served as VP of Product at LevelCredit, Head of Product at ZestFinance, Sr. Director of Product at BigPanda, Director of Product at Procore and Sr. Product Manager at RightScale.  Across this vast experience, Shivan built and scaled Product teams, working on product market fit, 0 to 1 product initiatives, and strategic partnerships while collaborating closely on go to market.

He holds a Bachelors in Computer Engineering from the University of California, San Diego and a Masters in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Tom Ryan is the Chairman of Struck Studio, as well as the President and CEO of Streaming at Paramount Global.

Prior to Struck Studio and Paramount, Tom was the CEO and Co-Founder of Pluto TV, the leading free streaming television service in America that is also available in 22 countries across Europe and Latin America. At Pluto TV, Tom was responsible for scaling annual revenue to $1Bn in 7 years. Paramount acquired Pluto TV in 2019.

Earlier in his career, Tom served as CEO of Threadless (a popular crowdsourced design and e-commerce company), SVP of Digital Strategy at EMI Music, and as a co-founder of Cductive (an early digital music retailer company that he merged with eMusic). 

Tom holds an AB from Dartmouth College and an MBA from INSEAD.