CEO at Straia
Ryan Lau
Co-founder and CEO of Straia. Scaled first edtech startup to $5M in 9 months. Called over 3,000 colleges and universities before starting Straia. Spent nearly my entire career investing and operating at intersection of education and technology. Wharton grad.
Questions & Answers
What's the story behind your company?
I spent almost a year cold calling over 3,000 higher ed administrators before starting Straia. Nearly every person I spoke to mentioned the same problem: they're drowning in data but can't actually use it. Legacy systems of records were built decades ago to store information, not answer questions. So enrollment managers, advisors, and VPs are stuck filing IT tickets or waiting months for basic reports while enrollment drops and students fall through the cracks. Straia is an agentic AI platform that aggregates siloed data sources and lets administrators instantly query their institutional data and take action on it. We're starting with community colleges, where the pain is sharpest, and building toward replacing the legacy system of record entirely with a fully AI-native system of record for every college and university in America.
How is your team uniquely positioned to solve the problem you're tackling?
Straia's success requires deep industry networks, enterprise AI deployment experience, and the ability to build hyper-technical products for non-technical users. This is the only team that brings all three. Ryan (CEO) has spent his career in edtech - scaling his last company to $5M in revenue in under a year before cold-calling 3,000+ admins to build Straia. He's already booked $5M in revenue for Straia with $0 spent on GTM. Gautam (COO) helped scale Sana's GTM and deployment team through its $1.1B acquisition by Workday. He now leads deployment at Straia - the most critical function for an AI product selling into complex institutions. Alan (CTO) built the data infrastructure behind Skillz's 30M-user platform through its $3.5B IPO. Serial startup builder who architects systems that scale. Nikki (CPO) led AI product engineering at The Trade Desk and co-founded a Khosla-backed startup as CTO. She builds powerful products real users can easily use and understand.
What inspired you to start your business?
My parents met as immigrants at a community college in the 1970s. Because of that institution, they built a middle-class life for our family - something never possible back in Hong Kong. That is why I care so deeply about this space. I've spent my career in education, and the more I've studied the system, the clearer the problem has become. Enrollment is falling. Administrative staff has grown at 5x the rate of instructional faculty. The infrastructure was built decades ago and is buckling under its own weight. Colleges are the front door of opportunity for millions of Americans - first-generation students, immigrants, etc. They are the pillars of their communities and deserve modern tools to operate effectively and keep that door open. I started Straia because the people running these colleges are mission-driven and capable, they just don't have the technology to match. We're building the infrastructure to make higher education sustainable for generations to come.
