Syed Mustafa

I build systems that help ambitious companies grow. I'm drawn to early-stage work, places where the right infrastructure can be the difference between an idea and something that compounds.

I currently lead growth at Claybird (YC F25), which uses AI video models to generate hyper personalized ads. I joined early and built much of our growth infrastructure from scratch. Within two months of launch, we reached $75K in revenue and signed 19 enterprise contracts with companies like Coca Cola, Eight Sleep, Mercor, and Delve. This traction helped us raise a $3.7M seed round from Lightspeed and Susa Ventures.

Before Claybird, I led DirectorySF at Solaris, which was an experiment in creating a city block of the most ambitious startups in San Francisco. We opened co living houses and founder offices in Hayes Valley and scaled the initiative to $125K in monthly revenue. The community we cultivated came to include Exa, Friend, Roboflow, Browserbase, and Cal.ai, among others. Their collective valuation now exceeds $3B.

Earlier, I bootstrapped NinjaTools AI to $30K in monthly recurring revenue within two months. I built a creator affiliate program across YouTube, Reddit, and TikTok, and paired it with email based retention systems that actually worked.

I studied computer science and neuroscience at the University of Michigan.