Ishan Goswami

Before joining Exa, Ishan had already spent years building multiple AI products.

He founded Edden, a startup that turned text into videos.

Before Edden, he was also part of Rephrase.ai, an Indian generative AI startup focused on creating hyper-personalized videos at scale.

In 2023, Adobe acquired Rephrase.ai, its first acquisition in India.

Working on AI products at that scale taught him a lot. They become something people naturally want to use and share.

Joining Exa

He joined exa when it was at around 10 employees, now they are 150 people.

When Ishan joined Exa, AI search was beginning to take off.

Large language models had changed how people searched for information, and developers were looking for better search infrastructure to build AI applications.

Exa wanted to become that infrastructure.

Instead of focusing only on traditional marketing, the team looked for ways to put the product in front of developers organically.

That meant building things that were actually usable.

Today it is Backed by top investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Benchmark, Lightspeed, Y Combinator, and NVIDIA's NVentures.

Also 5,000+ companies use Exa's APIs.

400,000+ developers have adopted the platform.

The Side Project

Rather than launching another advertisement, Ishan built a simple internet tool inspired by Spotify Wrapped and called it X wrapped

Users could connect their X accounts and instantly receive a personalized summary of their activity over the past year.

The results looked good.

Most importantly, they were easy to share.

Within days, timelines were filled with people posting their personalized Wrapped cards.

Every shared post introduced another person to Exa.

The project spread because users wanted to show it to their friends not because they were asked to.

Gaining around 500k+ users shortly after launch.

The Results

The campaign reached far beyond Exa's existing audience.

Hundreds of Thousands of people who had never heard of the company suddenly discovered it through posts shared by friends, creators, and developers.

What started as a small side project became one of Exa's most recognizable marketing moments.

After seeing the response, Ishan brought Twitter Wrapped back again at the end of 2025 with new features and improvements.

The second launch generated another wave of attention.

By then, people were actively waiting for it.

Exa's Growth

While projects like Twitter Wrapped helped introduce people to the company, Exa itself continued growing rapidly.

The startup raised an $85 million Series B led by Benchmark at a $700 million valuation.

Later, it announced another funding round that valued the company at approximately $2.2 billion.

Its developer-first approach and AI search infrastructure attracted companies building the next generation of AI applications.

The Takeaway

Ishan Goswami didn't build awareness by chasing clicks.

He built something people wanted to talk about.