Following Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter, now rebranded as X, two individuals were spotted outside the company’s headquarters, one of whom introduced himself as “Rahul Ligma,” a purportedly laid-off Twitter engineer. However, his real name is Rahul Sonwalkar, and the prank quickly went viral.

Sonwalkar further amplified his character’s notoriety by posing as a laid-off FTX worker in the Bahamas, shortly after the cryptocurrency exchange’s collapse. Despite never having worked for X or FTX, Sonwalkar has a strong background in tech, having spent several years as an engineer at Uber and participating in Y Combinator with a logistics startup that he eventually scrapped.

The 27-year-old Sonwalkar is now focused on drawing attention to his more serious venture, Julius, an AI data analyst startup he founded approximately two years ago. The tool is capable of analyzing and visualizing extensive datasets, performing predictive modeling from natural language prompts, and has garnered over 2 million registered users.

Sonwalkar’s goal with Julius is to make data science accessible to everyone, he told TechCrunch. Although some of Julius’ functionality is also available on other platforms like ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, and Google’s Gemini, the tool has impressed Iavor Bojinov, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School (HBS), who persuaded Sonwalkar to modify Julius for HBS’ new required course, Data Science and AI for Leaders.

Bojinov praised Julius, stating that it outperformed other platforms, including ChatGPT, in a head-to-head comparison. The adoption of Julius by HBS, which produces around 1,000 future business leaders annually, is a significant win for the startup, which currently has a team of 12 employees.

According to sources familiar with the deal, Sonwalkar has secured a seed round led by Bessemer Venture Partners’ Talia Goldberg, although he declined to discuss the details. When asked if his “Rahul Ligma” stunts helped open doors for Julius in its early days, Sonwalkar admitted that it had a minor impact initially but not as much recently.

While Sonwalkar’s prankster persona may have initially drawn attention, his focus on Julius and its capabilities has earned the startup a significant user base and recognition from esteemed institutions like HBS. As Julius continues to grow and develop, it will be interesting to see how Sonwalkar’s unique blend of humor and technical expertise contributes to the company’s success.