Homebrew exists largely because we sat next to one another at Google for several years, but we were not alone in the AdSense bullpen. There were many talented colleagues alongside, all of whom continued down paths of entrepreneurship, leadership, and investing. One of those individuals was Shuman Ghosemajumder, who led integrity efforts for AdSense and later expanded that to create Google’s Trust & Safety team. Shuman functioned equally well at 50,000 ft and 50 ft altitudes. That is to say, he could talk theory and strategy but also roll up his sleeves and get into the details of a clickstream to identify the most sophisticated fraud rings. This served him well, not just at Google, but also in cofounding Shape Security, which was later acquired by F5 for $1 billion. So when Shuman approached us to share that he was building once again, this time with cofounder Rich Griffiths, his previous Product VP at Shape, we immediately joined the cap table.
Now after operating quietly, Reken has announced itself, and the $10 million funding they raised to start the journey. As Shuman tells the Wall Street Journal, you need to use AI to fight AI, beginning with a first product focused on trust and safety in enterprise online communications that is already in use by pilot customers and global CISOs.
“Because of generative AI, AI has gotten to the point of complexity that humans can't detect it effectively. So the only way to be able to do that is to analyze all of the data that you've got for patterns and anomalies. What you want is to democratize that AI and make it available to everyone in such a fashion that you can proactively offer protection against misinformation, disinformation and fraud.”
A limited amount of information can be found at their website ;-)
