The Upstarts Podcast

Alex Konrad
  • 5.0 (9)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

On The Upstarts Podcast, you’ll hear from some of the most exciting Upstarts today: emerging technology leaders punching above their weight to achieve real impact.  Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad profiled leaders from Marc Benioff to Melanie Perkins in a decade-plus at Forbes. Now as the founder and editor of Upstarts Media, he’s sitting down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.  You’ll leave each interview with a new understanding of a world-changing technology that’s transforming how we live and work – as well as strategies and tactics any builder can put to use. 

  1. 4d ago

    Pigment’s Eléonore Crespo: Building France’s Next Unicorn With AI Agents And Tom Cruise

    The world's big companies are blowing through their AI budgets. At French startup unicorn Pigment, Eléonore Crespo wants to help. "Our CEO is pressuring us for everybody in the company to use AI, but we don't have any right way to think about it," Crespo says she hears chief financial officers complain. “It’s going to be a big topic for everyone, and it goes beyond just understanding your costs." Pigment, founded by co-CEOs Crespo and Criteo veteran Romain Nicoli in 2019, fights runaway AI spending with AI. Its agents help CFOs and finance teams at customers like Anthropic, Notion, Coca-Cola and Unilever make faster, better financial decisions. For analysts, Crespo argues her tools can free up much of the 80% of time they currently spend sifting through data; her (perhaps optimistic) hope is that they can then focus on higher-level decisions, without fearing for their jobs. On The Upstarts Podcast, Crespo talks about how building in Paris helps Pigment compete; how a culture of “unreasonable hospitality” makes it win; and how careful communication makes a co-CEO setup work. Plus, she shares her Upstart Moment: landing a key executive hire, with an in-person assist from the actor Tom Cruise. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 02:18 What Pigment does, and who it helps 06:06 Seeing Google’s spreadsheet problem first-hand 10:05 Finding a co-founder, CIA style, and a product, Ferrari style 15:49 Cookies, WhatsApp and “unreasonable hospitality” as strategy 18:56 How to make startup co-CEOS work 24:00 Building in Paris versus the Bay Area’s “talent buffet” 30:11 How AI agents change CFO and analyst jobs 34:05 Bringing AI token spending under control 39:02 How Tom Cruise helped close Pigment’s CRO hire Eléonore's LinkedIn Pigment For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠⁠Rippling⁠⁠ Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

  2. Jul 10

    Radical AI’s Joseph Krause: The Scientist Building The ‘Waymo’ Lab For New Materials

    Materials science hasn’t changed much in 150 years. Radical AI CEO Joseph Krause wants to change that. In a big new lab in Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, the startup founder is looking to change that. He’s building a “next-gen” approach that he says makes other autonomous labs look like hand-free driving mode on a car, compared to a fully self-driving Waymo. It’s an approach that plenty of corporate scientists tell Krause must be too good to be true. “How could you really discover more alloys in a week than we have discovered in our company history?” he says they ask. But since its founding in 2024, Radical AI has already produced valuable, and secret, alloys for customers, Krause insists. And the startup has done it after raising just $55 million in its last funding round, not the $1 billion of well-heeled competitors.. On the Upstarts Podcast, Krause explains how a SpaceX breakthrough helped kick off a category; why cloud labs and deep tech companies often fail; and why concurrent engineering is as important as next-gen lab equipment itself. Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: a 100-year-vision to become one of the world’s most important companies: “When we put a civilization on Mars, the habitat that they're living in will be made with Radical materials.” Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 01:25 What Radical AI does 04:36 Starting with metal alloys 08:30 Cold-emailing 100 VCs 12:22 An industry unchanged until SpaceX 15:56 Waymo vs. hands-free driving 19:09 Succeeding where cloud labs failed 25:42 Why Radical doesn’t need a billion dollars – yet 29:01 Unlocking 10x more research for customers 35:23 Why scientists should root for Radical 36:28 A 10-year timeline for impact 38:53 Radical materials on Mars Joseph's LinkedIn Radical AI For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠⁠Rippling⁠⁠ Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

  3. Jul 2

    Blitzy's Brian Elliott: Cursor And Claude Code Are Looking At Your Enterprise Code ‘Through A Straw’

    First at West Point and then as an officer in the U.S. Army Rangers, Brian Elliott always sought out the hardest, highest-impact challenge. “You can do hard things that don’t have impact, but you can’t do things that have impact that aren’t hard,” he says. Now Elliott is taking the same approach at Blitzy, the Boston-based startup he co-founded with Harvard Business School classmate Sid Pardeshi in 2023 to overhaul and lead massive code projects for large corporations. Blitzy’s agents can understand 100 million-plus lines of code, automating away work that customers would otherwise pay millions over months to consulting firms to barely crack. “For eons, we have been limited by how much a human context can hold in their brain,” Elliott argues. Now Blitzy can offload that context to its AI systems: “We can do changes at a size and scale that were previously impossible." On The Upstarts Podcast, Elliott shares how he built Boston’s newest tech unicorn by becoming a CFO’s friend; why Cursor and Claude Code only see enterprise code through a straw; and what West Point and the Army Rangers taught him about operating with precision under pressure. Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: catching the 6am train to New York to close an early customer, with his co-founder’s visa at stake. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 1:59 What Blitzy does 7:12 Like an F-15 of 'pure technology risk' 10:43 West Point, the U.S. Army Rangers, and Harvard 18:34 Why OpenAI's models can't do it alone 21:20 Building in Boston, not Silicon Valley 23:50 A visa-saving Upstart Moment 27:23 Proving value across millions of lines of code 31:07 Why token maxing won't work 34:41 A CFO's best friend 38:20 Moving to 'proactive' autonomy next Brian's LinkedIn Blitzy For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠⁠Rippling⁠⁠ Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

  4. Jun 25

    Writer’s May Habib: Building AI Tools For Corporate ‘Normal People’ The Labs Leave Behind

    Writer’s May Habib: On VC Bias, Token Maxing’, And The Customers Anthropic And OpenAI Leave Behind Fortune 500 boards are in weekend crisis meetings about adopting AI. Many have nothing to show for it, despite spending millions with the big AI labs. "Anthropic and OpenAI salespeople walk in like heroes, get a contract, and leave to literally never be seen again,” says Writer CEO May Habib. That’s where her startup, Writer, cleans up. Valued at $1.9 billion, Writer builds for the ‘normal’ people in enterprise, its agents helping customers like Accenture, Cigna and Vanguard with everything from creating morning sales briefings to personalized product invites. On The Upstarts Podcast, Habib talks about the pivot from Qordoba’s machine translation to Writer’s AI models; ‘token maxing’ and tokenomics’ “absolute insanity”; and why she believes people should start getting fired for buying AI without results. Plus, she shares her Upstart Moment: facing VC bias first-hand, from Vinod Khosla falling asleep in their meeting, to a rejection from Sequoia that called her running a startup with two kids “inspiring.” Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 1:55 How Writer helps ‘normal’ people 9:31 The temperature in the C-suite around AI 16:56 The killer use case for Writer’s tools 21:16 Pivoting from Qordoba to Writer 22:31 Vinod Khosla, Sequoia, and bias in VC 27:43 ‘Survive, don’t sell, don’t quit’ 30:33 Why Writer trains models, but isn’t a lab 33:38 Anthropic, OpenAI and how Writer can compete 40:52 Why people should be fired for buying AI badly May's LinkedIn Writer For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠⁠Rippling⁠⁠ Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

  5. Jun 19

    Mutiny’s Jaleh Rezaei: Walking Away From Millions In Software To Grow Even Faster With Sales AI

    Salespeople have a problem: they only spend 21% of their time actually selling to customers. Founder Jaleh Rezaei set out to fix that – and business was booming. Her startup, Mutiny, reached $10 million-plus in revenue for software that helped take some of the busywork out of the sales process. “When you start a company, the expectation is failure,” she says. “It’s really hard to accept that you’re going to burn it to the ground for the possibility of a better future.” But the CEO now believes that re-founding Mutiny, including painful layoffs and firing all of its customers, was the best thing she could do. The reborn business now uses AI agents to automate away that pain, allowing sales reps to set custom pricing and share peer case studies with just a prompt. It’s growing 150% month over month. On The Upstarts Podcast, Rezaei shares why follow-ups are the sales killer; how AI is disrupting software; and how she got over ‘Claude spookies’ about the big labs. Plus, she shares her Upstart Moment: convincing her co-founder to start over again, on a fateful New York walk. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 2:41 An AI agent for sales 7:04 Why an AI ‘blank canvas’ doesn’t work 10:38 Jaleh’s founder journey and Gusto lessons 17:01 Mutiny’s early software success 22:51 Jaleh’s Upstart Moment: tearing it down 24:42 Why you can’t rebuild a business halfway 27:15 Intercom’s founders share valuable advice 30:44 Focus on the business, not the optics 34:53 ‘Speed is the only thing that matters’ 37:40 ‘Claude spookies’ in the AI app layer 43:59 Second-time founder advantage For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠⁠Rippling⁠⁠ Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

  6. Jun 12

    TBC’s Alex Ksendzovsky: The Neurosurgeon Using Brain Cells To Build Better AI

    Ever since neurosurgeon Alex Ksendzovsky was in college, he’s been captivated by an idea worthy of a mad scientist: turning brain cell ‘wetware’ into ‘software’ that can make predictions and help train AI. It sounds like science fiction, but at Ksenzovsky’s startup The Biological Computing Co., or TBC, the founder swears it’s already reality. A model improved with algorithms derived from a process that involves connecting a dish of neurons to tiny electrodes demonstrated a 27-fold efficiency gain. “I have about 500 million years of evidence behind me,” Ksendzovsky says. “So our moat is evolution.” Investors have poured more than $25 million into the project. But at least one told Ksendzovsky to leave the neurons out of their pitch, for now. He won’t listen. “We’re bringing something completely crazy to the world, and we’re showing that it works,” Ksendzovsky says. On The Upstarts Podcast, we discuss why algorithms derived by actual brain cells beat traditional ones only inspired by the brain; the ethics of using living neurons for training AI models; and a possible living data center future. Plus, Ksendzovksy shares his Upstart Moment: giving up, alongside his neurosurgeon co-founder, promising careers in academia to pursue a startup. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 01:12 Building software from wetware 05:09 A college idea to predict the stock market 08:40 The first test from an Airbnb 12:46 Rat neurons and electrodes 17:30 Pitching VCs with no data 24:52 Promising early AI results 31:09 The ethics of using neurons 34:40 ‘Our moat is evolution’ 35:38 A real-time biological computing future For more, visit ⁠⁠⁠https://www.upstartsmedia.com/⁠⁠⁠ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠⁠Rippling⁠⁠ Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠LightningPod

  7. Jun 5

    Vanta’s Christina Cacioppo: The Underdog Turning ‘Nonsense’ Compliance Into A $4.2B Security Standout

    When Vanta co-founder Christina Cacioppo first pitched investors on compliance software, she faced a frosty reception. It wasn’t a viable product category, she was told. They’d sell for peanuts within a couple of months. No one actually wanted to work on compliance. But Cacioppo had felt the pain first-hand. She was convinced: software could prove the perfect painkiller for fellow startups to handle security audits and grow faster. Today, Vanta works with more than 16,000 customers like Lovable, Snowflake and Icelandair. It’s valued at $4.2 billion – and it’s successful enough that Cacioppo is now fending off a new wave of startup copycats. She welcomes the challenge. “I subscribe to the ‘never let them see you blink’ school of thought,” she says. On The Upstarts Podcast, Cacioppo shares how she created hype in a sleepy category; how she prioritizes “infinity things” as a startup unicorn CEO; and why when it comes to good security hygiene, we could all spend more time brushing our teeth. Plus, she shares her Upstart Moment: working to re-think, and attempt to future-proof, Vanta’s software business for the era of powerful AI models. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 1:39 What Vanta does 5:26 Selling to other startups 9:28 How AI agents change ‘pretty much everything’ 14:06 Christina’s *real* founder origin story 16:23 Underdog fundraising and gaming VCs 18:59 The problem with startup valuations 24:08 Turning LinkedIn ‘cringe’ into customer traction 26:41 Reinventing Vanta with AI 33:43 Whether AI could clone Vanta 35:23 ‘Never let them see you blink’ 37:24 Avoiding burnout with ‘infinity things’ to do For more, visit ⁠⁠https://www.upstartsmedia.com/⁠⁠ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠Rippling⁠ Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠LightningPod

  8. May 28

    Orchid’s Noor Siddiqui: Rigging The Genetic Lottery To Create Healthier ‘Superbabies’

    If you could fix the genetic lottery to ensure your baby was born healthy, would you? For entrepreneur Noor Siddiqui, there's no question. Ever since her mother started to lose her vision as the result of a genetic condition, she’s dreamed of solving the problem through better genetic testing. And at Orchid, the startup she founded in 2019, she now offers a novel approach to genetic testing that can spot thousands of potential conditions in embryos before they’re implanted as part of the IVF process. Orchid assisted its first birth in 2023, and now works with more than 100 clinics in the U.S. and abroad. But Siddiqui’s vision for designer “superbabies” has plenty of doubters, from Orchid’s ethical implications to its cost, at $2,500 per screened embryo. Siddiqui’s heard it all. "Right now, it might be edgy for me to say, 'Sex is for fun, and embryo screening is for babies,' but I just think it's a statement of fact.” On the The Upstarts Podcast, Siddiqui talks about her founder journey as a Thiel Fellow turned Stanford research dropout; why she compares previous testing to proofreading only the chapter titles of a book; and how she’s gotten used to the backlash. Plus, she talks about her Upstart Moment: sparking a new wave of reproductive tech startups that she sees carrying the field far beyond where Orchid can go alone. CHAPTERS 00:00 Introduction 1:45 Creating ‘superbabies’ 3:17 Motivated by mom’s blindness 8:04 Stigma around reproductive tech 11:26 How Orchid improves IVF 16:19 From Thiel Fellow to Stanford 21:42 Dropping out (again) for Orchid 24:40 Facing the ‘holy war’ haters 28:44 Orchid’s cost and improving access 34:00 Noor’s Upstart Moment 36:58 What success looks like For more, visit ⁠https://www.upstartsmedia.com/⁠ Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠Rippling Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠LightningPod

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On The Upstarts Podcast, you’ll hear from some of the most exciting Upstarts today: emerging technology leaders punching above their weight to achieve real impact.  Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad profiled leaders from Marc Benioff to Melanie Perkins in a decade-plus at Forbes. Now as the founder and editor of Upstarts Media, he’s sitting down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.  You’ll leave each interview with a new understanding of a world-changing technology that’s transforming how we live and work – as well as strategies and tactics any builder can put to use. 

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