I'm Alex — a founder and technologist mainly based in LA. I love leading happy teams, exploring the edges of tech and culture, and unlocking creativity in others.
I've been lucky to advise and invest in some exceptional founders and funds like Variant Fund, Marketplace Capital, Outside VC, Classy (acquired by GoFundMe), Flextrip (acquired by Nor1), FullContact, Maude, Overnight, Pluto Labs, Heights Labs, and others. I'm actively investing in exceptional founders — if you're building something cool, hit me up.
Most of my own projects focus on building tools and platforms for creators. I find joy in helping others express themselves and grow their creative practice.
Some of my past projects:
Medium — I joined Medium when they acquired my previous
company, Knowable. At the time, Medium was exploring audio and
other novel formats. I spun up a team to integrate
text-to-speech on the platform, making millions of posts
listenable. Listeners told us they absolutely loved being able
to enjoy Medium hands-free and screen-free.
With audio rolled out, I was asked to lead product for a large
part of the org. I founded a cross-functional growth team
spanning product, design, engineering, data science, and
content. Together, we flipped Medium's growth curve and tripled
new customers, driving an 8-figure increase in ARR in months.
This fundamentally changed the course of the company and put it
on a solid path to profitability. We also launched some
fantastic premium features along with a new membership tier
called "Friends of Medium" which was a home run with writers on
the platform. You can
read about it here.
Knowable — I co-founded Knowable, an app for audio-first learning backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Knowable started as a curated set of audio courses we produced with fascinating people like Alexis Ohanian, Chris Paul, Scott Kelly, Celeste Headlee, and Mark Bittman. Later, it evolved into a full-on creator platform, making it easy for anyone to create and monetize their own courses. Hundreds of subject matter experts produced high-quality courses on our platform and earned a share of revenue. Knowable was acquired by Medium in 2021, and the content library was licensed to LinkedIn. Read about the acquisiton in Techcrunch.
Vidme — I co-founded Vidme, a video platform for creators backed by Upfront Ventures, First Round Capital, Initialized, NEA, and other great investors. Vidme was the first non-live video platform to merge native membership features (à la Patreon) with rapid publishing tools (à la Imgur). It reached about 25M monthly active users at its peak and delivered billions of video views over its lifetime. Vidme was acquired by Giphy in 2018. After Facebook acquired Giphy, they let the domain expire. Entropy is a fundamental law of the universe. Read about Vidme in TechCrunch and Variety.
SocialEngine — I co-founded SocialEngine, a white-label social network platform, while in college. Customers like Apple, EA, Mastercard, and NASA used our software to power their own community websites, along with thousands of other niche groups. We boostrapped it to 7-figure ARR and profitability before joining the Techstars Boulder accelerator program, and later selling the company to Room 214, a digital agency.
BlogHoster — I co-founded BlogHoster, a white-label version of Blogger, when I was in high school during the blogging boom. This gave me an early taste of product-building and entrepreneurship that would leave me addicted for life. Thousands of customers used BlogHoster to create their own self-hosted blogging networks. BlogHoster was acquired by UK-based publisher Splashpress Media.
A few more just for fun:
Curate LA — an app and website I co-created a while ago to help people discover the best of LA's art and creative culture, and to help elevate emerging artists. We partner with museums, galleries, and alt spaces to make art experiences more accessible to everyone. Read about it in VICE.
Represent LA — a (now defunct) open source map of LA's startup scene back in 2012. Read about it in the LA Times, The New York Times, Forbes.
Nullcase — an iPhone case I created that helps you spend less time on your phone (by putting it in a mini jail).
And yes, that's actually my face. Thanks for reading!
