In this episode, we sit down with a University of Oregon professor specializing in entrepreneurship and tech innovation.
Alex Murray is an Assistant Professor of Management at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business, specializing in how entrepreneurs pull resources together and how emerging tech—like crowdfunding, blockchain, and DAOs—is changing the game.
He’s been published in top academic journals, sits on editorial boards for heavy-hitter publications like the Academy of Management Review, and was a Guest Editor for a special issue on AI in management. Before landing at UO, he was a Senior Researcher at ETH Zurich and earned his PhD from the University of Washington.
We explore the impact of AI on business and society, the challenges of revitalizing unbanked communities, and the evolving landscape of digital marketing. The conversation takes a deep dive into creativity, commerce, and technology, featuring personal stories of entrepreneurial struggles, investment strategies, and the changing dynamics of content creation in a saturated digital world.
Timestamps & Key Moments
🎙 0:00 - 6:00 | “How do you introduce yourself?”
• Kicking off the convo with AI, tech, and business
• Guest intro: UO professor researching entrepreneurship and innovation
• The challenge of explaining what you do in one sentence
💰 6:00 - 12:00 | “Would you work for a big company?”
• Why some people thrive in startups but not in corporate life
• The guest’s two-month stint at a massive accounting firm before quitting
• Moving to Nairobi, Kenya, and diving into entrepreneurship
📉 12:00 - 18:00 | “We just noticed these towns were completely unbanked.”
• How entire communities in the Southeast lost access to banking
• Microfinance for small businesses like bakeries and barbershops
• The real challenge of getting people to invest in their own communities
💡 18:00 - 24:00 | “The hardest it’s been in a lot of ways.”
• Why it feels like everything is harder right now
• The long game of rebuilding small economies
• How funding struggles post-2008 mirror today’s economic chaos
💰 24:00 - 30:00 | “So I have like to figure it out.”
• Personal investment, credit risk, and over-leveraging for business
• The psychology of why selling is harder than making
• Trying to get out of the loop of learning and actually start moving product
📈 30:00 - 36:00 | “The exodus from LA killed the film community.”
• The decline of full-time media gigs
• Why AI and market oversaturation are killing creative work opportunities
• How we went from getting steady contracts to fighting for scraps
📉 36:00 - 42:00 | “There’s no video arbitrage anymore.”
• The death of organic video growth and the TikTok gold rush
• Why viral content doesn’t hit the same anymore
• Fighting against content fatigue in a world where everyone’s seen it all
🛠 42:00 - 48:00 | “They kept beating me in the head with ‘Can you scale it?’”
• The reality of handmade clothing and why scaling is impossible
• Balancing artistic integrity with actual sales
• The tradeoff between quality and production speed
👕 48:00 - 54:00 | “I’m the most foremost bleach researcher to have ever existed.”
• Getting obsessed with process: R&D into custom clothing design
• The differences in fabric quality and why most brands cut corners
• Why I started investing in high-quality blanks instead of garbage Gildans
🚀 54:00 - End | “I fall in love with every single one.”
• The emotional attachment to creative work and why it’s hard to sell
• The challenge of pricing unique pieces
• Final thoughts on business, AI, and taking the next step
Description & timestamps were created using ai to pull data from a transcription of the episode + information from his UO website: https://business.uoregon.edu/directory/faculty_staff/all/amm16#publications
