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.

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.

Calvin is a Product Designer at Struck

Calvin brings over a decade of experience designing and building products, having held key roles at Fullscreen, Turner Broadcasting, and Girlboss. He’s passionate about leveraging user research and design craft to collaborate and produce validated, high-impact solutions across ventures. Prior to joining Struck, Calvin led cross-functional teams, successfully bringing a range of media and lifestyle products from 0-1.

Chaz is a Product Designer at Struck.

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.

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.

Haley is an Investor at Struck. Prior to joining Struck, Haley was an Investor at SoftBank Vision Fund, where she focused on growth-stage investments in enterprise and consumer software companies.

Prior to investing, Haley worked in Citigroup’s technology investment banking group, where she supported companies across various software and internet verticals through financing and M&A processes.

Haley graduated from the University of Southern California with a B.S. in Business Administration and was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia.

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.

Prior to joining Struck, Juan worked with companies across e-commerce, logistics, retail, and AI, including Electric, MakeSpace, ThirdLove, Olapic, and Intel.

With over 18 years of experience, he has built scalable, data-driven systems and has held tech lead roles, managing cross-functional teams and leading end-to-end system design.

His background spans backend development, data engineering, and machine learning, with a focus on delivering customer-facing products and internal platforms. Juan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems Engineering from Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Argentina.

Justin is an investor 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.

Before joining Struck, Luiz worked at CPQD, one of the largest research and development centers in Latin America, where he developed AI and Machine Learning initiatives across remote sensing, digital health, agribusiness, environmental monitoring, and recommendation systems.

Luiz holds a degree in Computer Engineering and a Master’s in Automation and Systems Engineering from Federal University of Santa Catarina, where he conducted research in Machine Learning/Computer Vision for biomedical image analysis, contributing to scientific publications and collaborations with research groups.

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.

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.

Sean is the Chief of Staff at Struck. Prior to joining, Sean spent time at M13’s venture studio, Launchpad, where he focused on building and launching new products from 0 to 1 alongside early-stage founders. Before that, Sean worked in product management at both B2C and B2B startups in New York City.

Sean graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in Economics where he was also a linebacker on the football team.

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.