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 of Struck Studio. 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).

Charlee Rae Bender is the Events and Marketing Manager at Struck where she implements and leads events in a firm-wide capacity to drive community, partner, and founder engagement both locally and nationwide.

Beginning her career at the leading media and public relations organization, Cision, she has spent over six years working across all aspects of the field and leading marketing initiatives for both client and internal initiatives. Additionally, she most recently served as the Events and Marketing Manager for Pepperdine University where she engaged with donors, alumni, and community partners.

Charlee Rae graduated with her B.A. in Communication Studies from Pepperdine University where she also served as her sorority’s chapter advisor and was heavily involved in the Greek Life community.

Christian is an Associate at Struck Studio. 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.

Don is a Principal at Struck Studio. 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 Design Officer of Struck Studio. 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 for Struck Studio.

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.

Jason is a Senior Associate at Struck Capital. Prior to Struck Capital, Jason spent more than three years as a Venture and Due Diligence Associate at MicroVentures, where he led research and analysis on Seed to Series B stage investment opportunities.

Jason started his career at the University of Rochester Tech Ventures group, the commercialization arm of the university. While there, he assisted with commercialization and licensing strategy for intellectual property and other university assets.

Jason graduated with his MS in Management from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He also earned his BS from Duke University, where he was the captain of the men’s tennis team.

Justin is a Venture Associate at Struck Studio. 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.

Lang is a Vice President of Investments at Struck Crypto. He partners with outlier founders in Web3 to accelerate product market fit and systematically scale early stage companies. Lang drives white space identification and new thesis development, investor positioning, due diligence and deal sourcing in Web 3.0.

He has significant experience investing in the blockchain and digital assets industry, dating back to early 2015. He has been an early investor in multiple blockchain innovators including the Matic Network (Polygon), Axie Infinity, Aave, Uniswap, Polkadot, Solana and Flow ecosystems, among others. Lang brings his extensive strategy and product experience in global banking, payments and financial technologies through his time as a Management & Technology Consultant at Accenture and experience with top tier global banks. These experiences solidified his thesis in the merits of Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and various areas of blockchain innovation including NFTs, GameFi, DAOs, the Metaverse and Web 3.0 infrastructure and tooling.

He completed his MBA from the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. Focused on technology disruption and venture capital, he was also the President of Web3 @ Kellogg, where he operated in the pulse of blockchain innovation in the Northwestern and greater Chicago community. He also holds a Bachelors of Commerce degree from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.

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.

Leo is the Director of Platform at Struck Crypto. He leads all value-add services for the crypto fund, partnering with founders on go-to-market, marketing/community/PR, and operations. In addition, Leo manages ecosystem development to interface with the Web3 community, partners, and service providers.

Leo has significant experience in strategy and operations from his time at Cross River as the Chief of Staff for the crypto team and as a fractional COO for early-stage startups where he advised founders across HR, finance, and operations. He started his career at BNY Mellon on the corporate venture team that made principal investments in companies including Fireblocks, R3, and HQLAX.

Leo began his journey in Web3 in 2018 as a team member at Crypto NYC. He graduated from NYU’s Stern School of Business.

Marty is a Principal at Struck Studio. 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 the an Operating Partner for Technology 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.

Romina is the Lead Web Engineer at Struck Studio.

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 for Struck Capital. 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 Struck Capital’s Operating Partner for Product.  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.

Sophia is a Principal at Struck Studio. Prior to Struck, Sophia served as Director of Strategy at Reformation, a growth-stage consumer brand based in Los Angeles.

Before Reformation, Sophia spent five years on the investment team at Greycroft focusing on early-stage consumer and enterprise SaaS deals.

Prior to her foray into the technology world, Sophia spent time in the intelligence space focused on global counter-terrorism across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Sophia hopes to use this nascent curiosity of human behavior and her later experience investing in some of the world’s fastest growing startups to help build disruptive businesses with Struck Studio.

Sophia speaks four languages and received an MA with highest distinction from King’s College London and a BA from Kenyon College.

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.