Alex Konrad
Tech journalist (founder/editor, Upstarts Media; ex-Forbes) profiling startup leadership and revenue orgs; strong engagement on deep-dive leadership stories.
AI Era Forces Cash‑Positive SaaS to Rethink Product Design
Exclusive: Remote has $300M in ARR. It's cash flow positive. And in the AI agent era, CEO Job van der Voort says it wasn't enough. “The way we design applications has to change." It's a case study for software companies grappling with AI. The problem, solution and lesson, for @upstartsmediaco subscribers 👇 https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/startup-remote-payroll-ai
Hire Passion, Not Experience, to Cut Medicare Costs
"No one is waking up every day thinking about Medicare." They work to save seniors $1,100-plus annually on their Medicare. But Chapter CEO Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz says he's never hired someone from the healthcare industry. Instead, Chapter hires for people excited about working...
Serval Launches Accelerated Equity Program for Aspiring Founders
Exclusive: Serval has had a problem: not enough top talent to work on its biggest accounts. So Serval is launching a new-look solution: a dedicated program, Serval Start, that offers accelerated equity vesting and access to its investors to aspiring future...
CEO Turns Medicare Disruption Into $3B Valuation
“I am one of the most hated people in the industry." Chapter CEO Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz is on a mission to save seniors thousands on their healthcare. That makes him a target for legacy Medicare providers. But business is booming, with $100M in...
Cohere CEO Pushes IPO for Broader Public Ownership
"Private citizens need to be able to take a stake in the company." Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez says he doesn't care what valuation his AI lab goes public at, but he does care about taking it through an IPO. "If we stay...
AI Email App Extra Aims to Rival Gmail
EXCLUSIVE: Extra wants to manage your 'life's inbox' for you. The AI-powered consumer app launches publicly today with $9.5M. But can it challenge Gmail and the looming threat of ChatGPT? I tested out Extra myself, spoke to users, and interviewed its ex-Pinterest...
Human Oversight Remains Essential for High‑Stakes AI Decisions
"There's a certain category of activities or actions that we're never going to fully automate, that we will always have a human in the loop for." - Cohere CEO and Transformer paper co-author Aidan Gomez "There are many, many ethical questions...
Cohere’s Aidan Gomez Chooses Sovereign AI Over Easy Wins
"We're not looking for the easiest path, we're looking for the right path." NEW: Aidan Gomez is trying to build a different kind of AI company at $6.8B-valued Cohere. On The Upstarts Podcast, Gomez talks about his journey from small-town Ontario to...
Decagon’s Duet Blends Slow Reasoning with Fast Task Solving
How does $4.5B-valued Decagon incorporate new SOTA models? "If you look at what these big AI labs are pumping out now, it's a lot of these slow reasoning models. They want to be good at coding, but you want to...
Speed Wins Early, Not a Sustainable Moat
"Speed should get you to somewhere that has more long-term advantages." At $4.5B-valued Decagon, speed is an advantage, not a moat. "If everyone is at the same starting line in the early days, it's just, how fast can you go?"...
SF Injury Lawyers Struggle as Billboards Favor B2B SaaS
It’s gotta be so tough to be an injury attorney in SF when every good billboard is taken by b2b SaaS
Flying Abroad Beats Domestic Tickets for Big Events
It's wild that it's now just consistently cheaper for Americans to fly to other countries to attend tentpole events like the World Cup, Olympics, or Taylor Swift concerts versus pay to attend them at home
Math-Powered API Guarantees Break‑Free Code
How can math make better code? "We want a world where vibe coding for complex systems and backends can be unlocked with the guarantee that you actually did it," says Axiom Math CEO Carina Hong. The $1.6B-valued startup's founder pictures a future...
Harvey CEO Regrets Secrecy, Wishes for Public Building
Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg's big regret: not building in public. "There was a lot of secrecy in the beginning. If I would do things over again, I would have figured out how to build in public faster." Being secretive wasn't deliberate or...
AI Startups Should Prioritize Infrastructure Over Competition
How do you survive as an AI startup competing with Anthropic and OpenAI Know when to retreat, says Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg. His advice for AI startups: focus on infrastructure, security and other defensible areas -- instead of getting "distracted" by...