Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
Inspired Capital
21 episodes
Steven Simoni Built a $2.2B Company to Reinvent the Way Wars Are Fought
4 Nov · 46 min
- Allen Control Systems has raised $242m at a $2.2bn valuation to build the Bullfrog counter-drone weapon station.
- The Austin-based defense company is shipping Bullfrogs to the battlefield three years into development.
Penny Pritzker on Microsoft, Harvard, and Building Inspired
22 Oct · 59 min
- Inspired Capital closes a $450m Fund IV and its portfolio includes 10 unicorns.
- Pritzker says Microsoft is working on a bill of rights for individuals and enterprises as org charts become people plus agents.
How AI Is Rewiring Marketing with Profound’s James Cadwallader
14 Oct · 43 min
- ProFound raises $180m at a $1.8bn valuation, its fourth round since 2024.
- CEO James Cadwallader predicts ChatGPT will run 650 or 6,500 web searches per query in three to five years.
Boris Sofman Went from Leading Autonomous Trucking at Waymo to Building Bedrock Robotics
3 Jun · 45 min
- Bedrock Robotics retrofits $600,000 excavators into operatorless machines, shipping its first driverless earthwork systems later in 2026.
- Boris Sofman predicts a sizable share of US trucking will be driverless by 2035, with meaningful driverless miles arriving in the early 2030s.
Max Shaw and Brian Distelburger on Reinventing People Management with Windmill
20 May · 53 min
- Windmill launched in November 2025 with over 100 customers and an $8m seed led by Inspired Capital.
- Brian Distelburger says AI agents will make humans the bottleneck because individuals remain accountable for work.
Cristóbal Valenzuela on How Runway's World Models Are Changing Storytelling
6 May · 52 min
- Runway, valued at $5.3bn, builds world models for narrative video, real-time interactive experiences, and robot training data, says CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela.
- Valenzuela says audiences pay for stories, not cameras, so cheaper video generation just lets more people tell them.
Dan Lorenc on Building Chainguard into a $3.5B Open Source Security Company
22 Apr · 51 min
- Dan Lorenc's open source security company Chainguard has raised $600m at a $3.5bn valuation and serves over 600 customers.
- Lorenc says AI coding tools have not sped up road maps because the bottleneck moves downstream.
Teamshares CEO Michael Brown on Why Going Public Is Just the First Inning
10 Apr · 49 min
- Teamshares filed its S-4 and expects to trade under ticker TMS in the second quarter via a Live Oak partnership.
- It has acquired 92 companies since 2020, reaching about $500m in consolidated revenue and $60m in operating EBITDA.
Replay: How Ben Lamm (Colossal Biosciences) is Bringing Back Extinct Species
25 Mar · 58 min
- Colossal Biosciences has produced dire wolf pups Romulus, Remus and Khaleesi from 73,000- and 13,000-year-old DNA.
- CEO Ben Lamm says Colossal targets woolly mammoth de-extinction by 2028, having edited about 25 of 85 target genes.
Taylor Francis on How Watershed Is Solving the Climate Crisis
11 Mar · 47 min
- Watershed, valued at $1.8bn, serves customers responsible for 5% of global emissions and targets 500m tons of CO2 cuts by 2030.
- Taylor Francis says climate strategy is shifting from compliance to revenue as Watershed sells emissions data to CFOs and procurement.
Julia and Thomas Berolzheimer on Why the Future of Shopping Will Run Through Creators
25 Feb · 43 min
- Alexa von Tobel argues a single creator can now be more powerful than a department store, a shift she says is remaking e-commerce as the creator economy reaches $500bn globally.
- Thomas Berolzheimer says the 2018 Gal Meets Glam Collection launch sold a lot but returned little money because it was a licensing deal, and the influencer-brand era has since fizzled.
Solace Founder Jeremy Gurewitz Raises $130M to Transform Healthcare Advocacy
11 Feb · 52 min
- Healthcare advocacy marketplace Solace raises $130M Series C led by IVP at over $1B valuation.
- Solace expands from Medicare into commercial insurance after the 2024 Medicare regulation began covering advocacy.
Kevin Ryan, the Godfather of NYC Tech, on AI in the Decade Ahead
28 Jan · 49 min
- AlleyCorp's Kevin Ryan predicts AI will eliminate 10 to 20m jobs over five years.
- Ryan bets on vertical AI applications replacing twenty years of SaaS, plus deep science.
How Flock Safety Became a $7.5B Crime-Fighting Company with Founder Garrett Langley
14 Jan · 38 min
- Flock Safety has surpassed $300m in ARR and is growing nearly 70% year over year.
- The company raised $275m in March 2025 at a $7.5bn valuation and expects close to one million arrests this year.
2026 Predictions: Physical AI, Quantum Computing & the Future of Work
7 Jan · 7 min
- Alexa von Tobel predicts physical AI will build autonomous infrastructure as U.S. utilities lose over 6bn gallons of treated water daily.
- She predicts quantum computing will pass 10,000 qubits by 2027 but remains five to ten years away.
Mikey Shulman on Building Suno into a $2.5B AI Music Platform
17 Dec 2025 · 57 min
- Suno raises $250M Series C at a $2.5B valuation, reaching $200M revenue and 100M users in under three years.
- Suno generates 7M tracks a day, and CEO Mikey Schulman calls the quarter that are remixes a gateway into making your own music.
Dylan Taylor on Building Voyager Technologies and the Future of Space Innovation
3 Dec 2025 · 50 min
- Dylan Taylor's Voyager Technologies, a $1.2bn public space company, won a NASA commercial LEO destination contract 20 months after founding.
- Voyager's Starlab targets replacing the ISS in 2030 with 100% of its lab space for about $3bn, versus the ISS's $450bn.
Axion Founder Daniel First on Solving the $4 Trillion Manufacturing Problem with AI
24 Nov 2025 · 46 min
- Axion's AI command center helps Boeing, Medtronic and SharkNinja trace quality failures to root causes across customer feedback and technician data.
- Founder Daniel First says quality costs $2-4tn of the $30tn U.S. manufacturing industry.
Nate Berkus on What It Takes to Become the Best at Your Craft
12 Nov 2025 · 1 h 0 min
- Nate Berkus launches Nate Berkus Associates at 24 after leaving Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, where he earned $780 every two weeks.
- Berkus's book Foundations, out November 18, is a roughly $50 thank-you note to followers, organized by area of the home.
May Habib on Building Writer into a $2B+ Enterprise AI Platform
29 Oct 2025 · 46 min
- Writer is valued at $1.9bn with $369m raised, and Uber, Pinterest and Vanguard run critical workflows on its AI agents.
- Habib predicts proactive LLMs that learn an organization's routines, and Writer's Palmyra models already carry over 90% of its volume.
How to Build an Entrepreneurial Company with Nik Storonsky of Revolut
4 May 2022 · 28 min
- Nik Storonsky says Revolut ships products fast by reusing a modular platform and defined playbooks instead of building each product from scratch.
- Storonsky predicts five or maybe ten large regional players will take about 80% of the retail market within five to ten years, leaving most small and medium banks unable to survive.