The Upstarts Podcast

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

For more, visit ⁠⁠⁠https://www.upstartsmedia.com/⁠⁠⁠

Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠⁠Rippling⁠⁠

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠⁠LightningPod

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

For more, visit ⁠⁠https://www.upstartsmedia.com/⁠⁠

Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠⁠Rippling⁠

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠⁠LightningPod

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

For more, visit ⁠https://www.upstartsmedia.com/⁠

Season 2 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by ⁠Rippling

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from ⁠LightningPod

The ChatGPT craze was still years away when Chilean-born Cris Valenzuela co-founded Runway to tinker on visual AI models with two classmates at an NYU lab in 2018.

Back then, investors weren't sold — not just on video AI, but on generative AI altogether. "There's always doubt when you get 50 rejections," Valenzuela says. "I've realized that building something special, you have to be able and willing to be non-consensus driven."

Fast forward, and Runway works not just with many film studios and Hollywood, but creative teams and engineers at corporations like Allstate, Siemens and Robinhood. It's had no recent trouble fundraising, reaching a $5.3 billion valuation. And it's outlasted gen AI's heavyweight, OpenAI, which recently shuttered its Sora app.

On The Upstarts Podcast, Valenzuela talks about his journey building an AI lab for artists in New York, and what the big labs missed; why Runway helps expert and amateur filmmakers alike; and why he believes creators should look past controversy around AI to embrace technology.

Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: collecting those rejection emails from top VCs and sharing them with the whole company to motivate his team.

Chapters

For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/

Season 1 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by Mercury

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

When Cobi Blumenfeld-Gantz's parents struggled to navigate Medicare—faxes, phone calls, even a trip to the Social Security office—he figured someone had built a better way. Nobody had.

So, in 2020, he co-founded Chapter: a startup focused on connecting Americans to better Medicare plans, saving seniors thousands of dollars per year. Among legacy healthcare players, that hasn’t made him many fans.

“I am one of the most hated people in the industry,” he says. “I’m bad for business.”

On The Upstarts Podcast, Blumenfeld-Gantz shares his journey from foreign policy studies to forward deployed engineer at Palantir; how Chapter’s nationwide database of Medicare plans helped it reach $100 million in revenue and a $3 billion valuation; and why he proposes a twist on a typical startup metric: product-market-channel fit.

Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: when last year’s government shutdown cut off Chapter's data right at the opening of Medicare's busiest enrollment window, and his team had one week to reverse-engineer their way out.

Chapters:

For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/

Season 1 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by Mercury

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

A self-described "shy nerd" from rural Ontario, Aidan Gomez doesn't like to scream his startup’s name from the rooftops.

But the co-author of the landmark ‘Attention Is All You Need’ paper is quietly building one of AI's most important infrastructure companies — one focused on bringing its benefits to the wider world outside Silicon Valley.

Toronto-based Cohere works with major enterprises and G7 governments, providing secure models for them to build everything from email-summary apps to onboard ship telemetry on top. Revenue grew 6x last year, past a reported $240 million; with $1.7 billion in total funding, an IPO is in its sights.

On the Upstarts Podcast, Gomez talks about his journey to co-developing the Transformer architecture that underpins modern AI; why he sees AI as the best shot at restoring global growth and democratic resilience; and why it’s so important that more nations than the world’s biggest benefit.

Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: building on ‘hard mode’ by not taking money from Amazon, Google or Microsoft early on.

Chapters:

For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/

Season 1 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by Mercury

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

When it comes to calling customer support, startup CEO Jesse Zhang knows your pain.  ”It's just a very frustrating experience, because you're stuck in a loop,” he says.

In 2023, he and co-founder Ashwin Sreenivas launched Decagon to solve the problem with powerful new technology: AI agents. Today, customers like Avis Budget Group, Duolingo and Fanatics all work with Decagon, helping it reach a $4.5 billion valuation.

But as AI unlocks new possibilities in support, Zhang faces serious competition from more established and better-funded rivals. On the Upstarts Podcast, Zhang shares how Decagon wins by using speed as a weapon, but not a moat; why 10x better products can fend off the big AI labs; and how his AI concierge can help future customers beyond just solving problems.

Plus, he shares his Upstart Moment: winning uphill sales battles with a bottoms-up hustle that turned “red dots” into green buyers.

Chapters:

For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/

Season 1 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by Mercury: https://mercury.com/

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod: https://lightningpod.fm/

Just nine months ago, Morgan Prize-winning prodigy Carina Hong was still on an academic track, pursuing a joint law degree and math PhD at Stanford. Now, as the founder of startup Axiom Math, she runs one of the most promising challengers in a new, fast-paced category: AI for math.

Recently valued at $1.6 billion, Axiom has already solved some of math’s most challenging problems, and Hong hopes it can help researchers advance the field. Her bigger ambition? To power real-time math-based verification of AI-generated code, to do away with vibe-coded slop.

On this episode of The Upstarts Podcast, Hong shares her founder journey from immigrant at MIT to Oxford, and ultimately dropping out of Stanford; how she’s learning as a first-time founder to help Axiom compete in a red-hot new category; and her Upstart Moment when Axiom took the world’s hardest college-level math test.

Chapters

For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/

Season 1 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by Mercury

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg operates between two worlds.

On one side are highly-trained lawyers who are skeptical about AI’s ability to improve their work. On the other are Silicon Valley technologists who see law as one of the fields that the biggest AI labs, Anthropic and OpenAI, can easily absorb.

Co-founded in 2022, Harvey now works with more than 100,000 lawyers across 1,000 businesses, generating $200 million in revenue and recently reaching an $11 billion valuation.

On The Upstarts Podcast, Weinberg talks about how a cold email to Sam Altman helped launch Harvey’s journey; why he believes lawyers are a surprise power user of AI tools; and why Anthropic is his biggest threat.

Plus, he talks about his Upstart Moment: a never-before-disclosed attempt to “one-shot” company growth that saw Harvey almost merge with another company of equal size in 2024 – only to luckily pull back.

Chapters:

For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/

Season 1 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by Mercury

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

Star Catcher CEO Andrew Rush grew up loving science fiction. Now he’s helping to bring a whole new generation of tech into reality in space by tackling its biggest bottleneck: access to power.

“Everybody basically goes on camping trips. You bring your solar rays with you,” says Star Catcher CEO Andrew Rush. “Our daily lives are based on and enriched by space, regardless of who we are. So providing more power ultimately enriches humanity.”

Rush isn’t new to the problem. He was previously CEO of Made In Space, which built the first 3D printer used in space more than a decade ago. In 2024, he co-founded Star Catcher, raising $12 million to harness the Sun’s power by beaming more concentrated energy to solar panels and satellite arrays.

On The Upstarts Podcast, Rush talks about his orbital career journey from patent lawyer to space CEO. He explains why energy and power are such an important unlock for space innovation, and why space startups are slowly getting better at raising venture dollars. And he shares his Upstart Moment, as Star Catcher passed key checkpoints by completing optical tests at Jacksonville's EverBank Stadium and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center last year.

Chapters:

For more, visit https://www.upstartsmedia.com/

Season 1 of the Upstarts Podcast is presented by Mercury: https://mercury.com/

Produced & edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod: https://lightningpod.fm/