Introducing Aatish Mandelecha, Founder and CEO of Strac

Sara Lindquist:

I'm Sara Lindquist from FUSE. We're an early-stage venture firm based right here in the Pacific Northwest. And just like the founders in our portfolio, we are just getting started. We believe that founders deserve more: more urgency, more community, more expertise, more reliability - more of everything. And we aim to deliver. Join me as I introduce each of our portfolio companies in the FUSE family to date.

Today, you'll hear from Aatish Mandelecha, Founder and CEO of Strac. Join us as we fire through a few topics about the business and entrepreneurial journey - and how Strac is changing the game in the personal data security market for businesses and their customers alike.

Let's get started!

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Sara:

Thanks for being here today Aatish. It's so great to be with you.

Aatish:

Thanks for having me, Sara.

Sara:

Well, I appreciate you taking the time to share a bit about the Strac story and about your story as well. So to kick things off, it would be great if you could share a quick overview about what Strac is and how it's serving customers today.

Aatish:

Strac helps financial services and healthcare companies secure their customers personal data - like social security numbers, driver licenses, passports, W2s, tax forms, medical records, et cetera - in a unique way where businesses don't even have to worry about any of security and compliances, while still getting their business function done. This is a huge and a growing problem for businesses and consumers alike. Some facts: There were 37 billion data records exposed in data breaches in 2020, which amounted to $56 billion lost by consumers to identity fraud. So that's what Strac does.

Sara:

Well, that's certainly a massive and growing problem. Aatish, it would also be super helpful if you could explain a bit about how your solution differs from others on the market, given its focus on the communication workflow. It was something that became so obvious when we saw the product for the first time.

Aatish:

If you look today, what is happening is every company has this policy of not sharing data over email or Slack or Zendesk or any other communication channels out there. But both consumers and employees at these companies find it extremely convenient and easy to share sensitive data over those communication channels. Our solution compliments these channels that everyone loves and we make it more secure.

Sara:

That's super helpful. And so walk me back in time a little bit. When did you first know that you needed to build Strac? Can you explain that "aha moment"?

Aatish:

I spent 11 years at Amazon building their payments infrastructure, including widgets, APIs and security. Most recently, I built their payment secure zone on AWS that stored, managed billions of credit cards, bank accounts, and connected with hundreds of payment partners. In 2020, I was a victim of Identity theft when I had to give out my SSN to a customer support agent. After all the pain I went through, I realized there's no good way to prevent future incidents like this. This could happen to anyone.

After discussing with several businesses on how they manage their customers' sensitive personal data, it was clear to me that Strac needed to be born to help such businesses, as they didn't have the technical or security expertise. That's how I started Strac.

Sara:

Awesome. Aatish, why do you think your team is the team to do this?

Aatish:

Currently our entire team is composed of ex-Amazonians. Each of us worked over there for over a decade. Our founding engineers, both Hans and Peter, they're amazing, exceptional engineers in terms of taking a complex problem and getting things done incrementally and beautifully. I worked with them for the last 11 years so I really enjoy working with them and also am super thrilled and privileged that they have joined Strac.

We are also remote first company and we love to move fast. One of our key tenants is building secure customer experiences - something the world is missing out on. So our discussions and culture revolve around making an average consumer's life safer and better. That's why we feel strongly about why we are the right team to solve this problem.

Sara:

That's great. You alluded to this a bit at the end of your last comment, but what's one word you would use to describe your culture?

Aatish:

Actually, the three words I would say.

Sara:

Even better.

Aatish:

It's speed and secure experiences.

Sara:

I love that. That's great. Aatish, my next question for you is about the startup journey at large. Being a founder and a leader of a company is hard work and comes with all sorts of challenges, so what keeps you going, especially in moments where others might have thrown in the towel?

Aatish:

I've always been entrepreneurial in my efforts at Amazon, whether it's pitching or building a whole new platform or solving immediate pain for customers. And not many people would know this, but for the last 10 years I have always wanted to start a startup. I have played around with many side projects all this while. Now when the opportunity arose, I was super excited. I wake up every day and get the opportunity to discuss with businesses the pain and uncertainty for how they safely keep the customers sensitive data. I want to do more of what we are already doing.

Sara:

Well, thank you for what you are building because it's certainly going to bring a lot more peace of mind to us as consumers, but also to businesses at large. So we appreciate that. Okay, in closing here, I have one final question for you. What right now do you need more of? How can any listeners tuning in help or get involved?

Aatish:

If there's any financial services company or a healthcare company that you know of, I would love to chat with them - whether they're a mortgage company or a tax company or a neobank or a healthcare startup - I would love to deeply understand the use case and help them out. Check us out at Strac.io.

Sara:

Awesome. And Aatish, are you hiring?

Aatish:

Yes, we are hiring. We're hiring engineers and sales development representatives.

Sara:

Perfect. Okay. Well everybody, time to hop aboard a rocket ship! Come join team Strac. Aatish, this was awesome. Thank you for being here. Really appreciate you taking the time.

Aatish:

Thank you so much, Sara.

Sara:

If you or someone you know works in a business function that sends and receives sensitive personal data via email or any other communication channels like Slack, Zendesk, Intercom, and others, we would love to get you connected to Aatish. Also, be sure to check out the company's job postings, which you can find right here on the FUSE website.

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next one.