Hi, I'm Alex.
I'm a founder and technologist based in LA. I like building opinionated products, leading happy teams, and learning about the frontiers of tech and culture.
I've also 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, and others. I'm actively investing in exceptional founders — if you're building something cool, please reach out.
Some of my past roles & projects:
Medium — I joined the team at 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. Suddenly, readers could listen to Medium while doing
things like driving, cooking, or working out. Listeners told us
they absolutely loved being able to enjoy Medium hands-free and
screen-free.
With audio successfully rolled out, I was invited to lead
product for a large part of the org. I founded and led the
growth team, an interdisciplinary group of contributors from
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. This
fundamentally changed the course of the company, putting it on
path to profitability. We also launched some fantastic premium
features along with a new subscription tier called "Friends of
Medium" which was a hit with writers on the platform. You can
read about it here.
I had a lot of fun working with Ev Williams and the executive
team to help reinvigorate the company with a new vision and
roadmap.
Knowable — I co-founded Knowable, an app for audio-first learning backed by Andreessen Horowitz. Knowable started life as a curated set of audio-based courses that 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 audio 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.
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), reaching about 25M monthly active users at its peak, and ultimately delivering 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.
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. We boostrapped it to 7-figure ARR and profitability before joining the Techstars Boulder accelerator program, and later selling the company to Room 214.
BlogHoster — I co-founded BlogHoster, a white-label version of Blogger, while in high school, affording 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 hosted blogging networks. BlogHoster was acquired by UK-based publisher Splashpress Media.
Plus a few things 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 artists from underrepresented communities. We partner with museums, galleries, and alt spaces to make art experiences more accessible to everyone. Read about it in VICE.
Nullcase — an iPhone case I created that helps you spend less time on your phone (by putting it in a mini jail).
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.
Thanks for reading!
