The Upstarts Podcast

The Upstarts Podcast

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.

Episodes

April 16, 2026 42 mins
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 mod...
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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 ...
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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...
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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 a...
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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 h...
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Startup founder Victor Riparbelli has always been drawn to counterculture ideas. "Life's more interesting at the fringes," he says. When Victor co-founded Synthesia in 2017 to produce AI video, most investors didn't buy it — nearly 100 said no. A pivotal refocus away from Hollywood toward unglamorous business use cases like training videos and internal communications changed everything, helping Synthesia reach $150 million in ann...
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$50 billion. That’s how much in tariff refunds Ryan Petersen hopes to retrieve for U.S. citizens using AI agents recently built by his startup, Flexport. But logistics unicorn Flexport was struggling when co-founder Petersen returned as CEO in 2023. Customers were fleeing; morale had plunged. Ryan talks about his Upstart Moment in engineering a comeback – and why AI agents are increasingly the answer for solving the messiest chal...
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Experts have called Valar Atomics CEO Isaiah Taylor “totally nuts.” He says that when you’re trying to build a trillion-dollar company that’s literally splitting the atom, it comes with the territory. Isaiah discusses his origins founding nuclear energy startup Valar, why competitors have failed, and his Upstart Moment in raising $150 million to build new-look energy campuses called “gigasites.” His life’s work: to solve AI’s ene...
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When Loyal founder Celine Halioua told people she was building a dog longevity startup, they laughed in her face. Now she's running what could be the largest-ever clinical trial to extend canine lifespans — pursuing FDA approval for multiple drugs to help senior and large dogs live two years longer or more. Celine shares her unusual journey to raising $250 million for a startup that defies easy labels, her Upstart Moment taking he...
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Canva co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins leads the most valuable woman-led startup in the world, a design and publishing tool used by more than 260 million users and valued at $42 billion. But before all that, Melanie was an Upstart: an unappreciated founder from western Australia who had to fly to San Francisco uninvited just to secure startup funding. Melanie goes into that Upstart Moment in this debut episode of The Upstarts Po...
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February 8, 2026 1 min
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, d...
Listen
Mark as Played

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