# Thenuka Karunaratne

> Thenuka Karunaratne is the CEO and co-founder of daydream, a San Francisco startup building an AI-native agency for organic search that pairs SEO agents with human growth experts. He started making money from affiliate websites in high school, bootstrapped a streaming-search business called Flixed through college using programmatic SEO, and in September 2023 launched daydream with co-founder Shravan Rajinikanth. The company raised a $15M Series A in April 2026 led by WndrCo, bringing total funding to roughly $21M.

- **Role:** CEO and Co-Founder at daydream
- **Organizations:** daydream (daydream Labs, Inc.), Flixed, Hustle Fund, Pango
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads daydream, an AI-native agency for organic search., Raised a $15M Series A (April 2026) led by WndrCo, with First Round Capital and Basis Set Ventures; total funding around $21M., Bootstrapped Flixed to 100,000+ streaming subscribers and significant revenue through programmatic SEO.

## Career timeline

- **High school** — Built affiliate websites, including netflixdnscodes.com, helping Canadians access American Netflix; the earnings helped fund his college education.
- **College** — Bootstrapped Flixed, a lead-generation business in the streaming industry, using programmatic SEO to drive 100,000+ subscribers to services like HBO, Disney, and Hulu.
- **Earlier career** — Worked as Chief of Staff to the COO at Pango and as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Hustle Fund.
- **2023-09** — Co-founded daydream with Shravan Rajinikanth to automate and elevate programmatic SEO.
- **2023-11** — Announced daydream's $2.5M pre-seed round.
- **2024** — Launched the daydream Experts in Residence program, likened to 'Webflow Experts, but for SEO.'
- **2026-04** — daydream raised a $15M Series A led by WndrCo, bringing total funding to roughly $21M.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads daydream, an AI-native agency for organic search.
- Raised a $15M Series A (April 2026) led by WndrCo, with First Round Capital and Basis Set Ventures; total funding around $21M.
- Bootstrapped Flixed to 100,000+ streaming subscribers and significant revenue through programmatic SEO.
- Built a customer case study (cybersecurity firm Twingate) reaching ~50,000 monthly visits from ~1,000 programmatically generated articles, sourcing about 20% of demo-page traffic.
- Backed by notable operators and investors including Lenny Rachitsky, Kareem Amin, Eli Schwartz, and Hustle Fund.
- Member of the Forbes Technology Council.

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — daydream raised a $15M Series A led by WndrCo, bringing total funding to roughly $21M, to accelerate hiring, product, and go-to-market.

## Links

- Website: https://withdaydream.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thenuka/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/thenuka_k

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/thenuka-karunaratne
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-24