Founders and Builders

Alex Christie (Attio CTO): The $116M Bet Against Salesforce and the AI Problem Every Founder Has

Alex Christie is the co-founder and CTO of Attio — the modern, flexible CRM taking on Salesforce, HubSpot, and a $180 billion market. Attio has raised over $116M from investors including Google Ventures, Balderton, and Point Nine, and is quietly building what could be the most important data infrastructure for the agentic AI era. In this episode we cover: * Why Alex and co-founder Nick spent 3 years building before launching publicly * The moment they finally admitted they were going after Salesforce * Why most AI companies are building on fundamentally broken data foundations * How Attio is positioning itself as the database for AI agents at scale * What great engineering teams actually look like at a fast-growing startup * The one principle that compounded into raising $116M — persistence pays compounding returns Whether you're building an AI company, hiring your first engineers, or thinking about taking on an established market — this episode is essential viewing. Subscribe for weekly interviews with the founders and investors shaping the future of technology. Founders & Builders is super proud to be partnering with CoreWeave, the Essential Cloud for AI. Check out CoreWeave.com to learn about how they serve some of the most important AI workloads on the planet.

AI Hackathon LIVE in Barcelona with Project Europe and CoreWeave

If you're building a business with AI, having a great product is only the beginning. You also need to understand infrastructure, distribution, capital, hiring, commercial strategy, and how to build the right team around you. In this live episode of Founders & Builders, I sat down with Ben Richardson, VP Strategy at CoreWeave, at the Project Europe Hackathon in Barcelona, surrounded by 80+ young builders hacking through the night. CoreWeave is one of the fastest-scaling companies in AI infrastructure, powering some of the world’s leading AI labs and building what it calls the Essential Cloud for AI. This conversation is really about what founders can learn from that journey. Ben shares why CoreWeave was purpose-built for AI workloads, how the company thinks about scaling internationally, why M&A can be a powerful tool when you’re moving fast, and why technical founders need to surround themselves with people who are strong in finance, commercial strategy, risk, and operations. We also talk about why CoreWeave showed up at Project Europe Hack Barcelona, not just as a sponsor, but to support the next generation of European technical founders with compute, advice, and access. Chapters: 00:00 Welcome to the Project Europe Hack Barcelona 01:19 Backing Europe’s next generation of AI builders 04:01 Inside CoreWeave’s hypergrowth and international strategy 05:32 Why AI needed a purpose-built cloud 06:48 What founders can learn from CoreWeave’s M&A and scaling playbook

Founders & Builders LIVE at Project Europe Hack Barcelona

Europe doesn’t need more people saying it should build products and start companies. It needs more rooms where people actually do it. We just got back from a live Founders & Builders episode at Project Europe [https://www.linkedin.com/company/project-europe-lfg/]'s Barcelona hackathon — with 90 of Europe’s best builders hacking through the night. I wanted to sit down with Kitty Mayo [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kittymm/] and Jade Yarrow [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jade-yarrow-a9103819a/] and learn how YOU can get involved in their next big hack. If you're thinking about building a company in Europe, you might want them on your cap table. Project Europe is also a startup... so we also get into their early days having been backed by Harry Stebbings [https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrystebbings/] and Kieran Hill [https://www.linkedin.com/in/kieranleehill/] and the 20VC [https://www.linkedin.com/company/20vc/] team, now with over 200 European founders funding the next gen of companies. and thanks to all the partners that came down for the hack! THEKER Robotics [https://www.linkedin.com/company/theker/] Clay [https://www.linkedin.com/company/grow-with-clay/] Preply [https://www.linkedin.com/company/preply/] Biorce [https://www.linkedin.com/company/biorce/] Cala [https://www.linkedin.com/company/cala-ai/] Ben Richardson [https://www.linkedin.com/in/benrichardsonuk/] Ben Carter [https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-carter-4aba8745/] Founders & Builders is sponsored by the awesome CoreWeave [https://www.linkedin.com/company/coreweave/] - the Essential Cloud for AI.

Why Most AI Agents Fail (And How to Build One That Works) | Joe and David, Founders of Asteroid

Joe and David are the founders of Asteroid, a YC-backed startup building AI browser agents that can automate real work inside the tools we use every day. In this episode, we go deep on why browser agents are such a big deal and what it really takes to get AI agents into the real world and how YOU can take advantage of them. We also unpack their journey through Entrepreneur First and Y Combinator, the hard pivots they made along the way, why most AI startups risk becoming consultancies, and what happens to jobs when agents start doing more and more of the work. Chapters: 00:00 Intro 01:47 The power of using AI agents 05:21 From fraud agents → the Asteroid idea 06:16 How to make your agents reliable 09:51 What Asteroid actually does (build, run, monitor agents) 13:25 Finding product-market fit 19:26 AI safety and supervision at Deepmind 28:57 Staying at the frontier of AI agents 34:23 Founder lessons and the future of work ⭐ Listener Suggestion – CoreWeave – https://www.coreweave.com/ 👍 Why subscribe? If you build, code, invest or care about the future of AI, startups and creative technology, this channel is for you. 🔔 Tap the bell so YouTube tells you when new episodes drop 🔔 #AI #startups #founders #agents #automation

Why Satellite Data Can’t Get Back to Earth (And the Startup Fixing It) | The Compression Company

Satellites scan the Earth thousands of times every day, powering AI, defence, and disaster response. But there’s a critical problem that not many people know about, but that our modern world is hindered by.In this episode of Founders & Builders, I sit down with Michael Stanway and Joe Griffiths, founders of The Compression Company, who are solving one of the hardest problems in modern infrastructure: how to move massive amounts of satellite and sensor data efficiently.We cover:- The biggest opportunities in space tech right now- Their experience moving to San Francisco as first-time founders- The “watermelon through a straw” problem of satellite data- How they raised a $3.4M round in 10 daysChapters:00:00 - Intro01:40 - The biggest problem in space and Satellite technology06:10 - How we use satellite data every day 11:46 - Entrepreneur First: Finding your co-founder14:54 - The Residency: Live & work with other founders in San Francisco18:58 - Raising $3.4M in 10 days (how they did it)21:23 - Building a compression factory for all data types31:07 - Founder wisdom: Focus ONLY on solving the most important problem38:37 - The Compression Company are hiring (reach out to them)Topics covered:Satellite data • Space tech • Data compression • AI infrastructure • Defence tech • Climate monitoring • Startup fundraising • Deep tech👉 Subscribe for weekly conversations with founders building the infrastructure behind the next generation of technology.