ALEX
THOMAS
I’m Alex. I help founders turn rough ideas into real traction, working across product, design, and UX. In the last decade, I’ve built alongside early-stage startups, hyper-growth scaleups, three unicorns 🦄, and an operational VC. Here are a few stories I’ve been part of.
Backed by YCombinator
Superpowered was the AI copilot for meetings - no bots, no recordings, just really good AI notes. It listened directly to your device’s audio and turned conversations into structured, useful insights in real time.
We were a small team of four with a big vision. Keeping things lean, I engaged directly with users through calls, concept testing, and even live Slack feedback loops. That closeness to our community helped us iterate quickly, guided by Mixpanel data and real user behavior.
We launched to a #5 Product Hunt win, 3× MRR in six months, and saw 45% month-over-month growth, with Michael Seibel as our hunter.
The growth was thrilling. Strong conversions, loyal users, and constant validation. But somewhere between metrics and meaning, we ran into the question every early-stage team eventually faces: is this a product, or the foundation for something bigger? That question sparked what became one of YC’s most successful pivots. Jordan and Nikhil went on to build Vapi, a voice-AI platform that raised $20M from Bessemer. For me, it was a masterclass in how hard decisions and deep curiosity shape real innovation.
Backed by Sequoia
Blockit, an AI scheduling assistant built to remove the everyday friction of meetings. The real challenge wasn’t AI, it was earning trust through consistency and precision. The product automatically coordinated calendars, found mutual times, sent confirmations, and updated schedules seamlessly, learning how each person liked to work.
Working with Kais Khimji and John Han, I helped shape the early user experience to feel calm, precise, and human. We built quickly, tested ideas in real workflows, and refined until scheduling felt invisible. It was one of the earliest products to make AI genuinely useful in daily life.
Alex helped us sharpen our UX thinking and translate our fuzzy ideas into a concrete flow that fit our vision and melded with our users.
Kais Khimji
Founder, Blockit
Backed by Consensys
Intuition is building a new layer for digital identity and reputation. A universal, portable system where users own their data, make claims, and build trust that travels across Web3. At its core is a semantic, token-curated knowledge graph, where every identity and claim becomes a verifiable on-chain asset.
I worked on the first version of the Intuition Portal, where users could create their first identity, issue claims, and stake to build credibility. Funded by ConsenSys, Intuition was one of the earliest attempts to treat reputation as an asset, where truth, trust, and ownership converge. I helped shape the UX and narrative for this early version, turning complex blockchain logic into a product that felt human, transparent, and meaningful.
At Project A, Europe’s leading early-stage VC, I worked with scale-ups like Trade Republic 🦄 and Sennder 🦄 just as they were entering their hyper-growth phase. My work focused on laying strong foundations -building design systems, hiring early design teams, and enabling rapid feature rollouts without breaking product consistency. It was a rare inside view into how disciplined systems and fast execution power some of Europe’s most successful unicorns.
Alex brings a rare entrepreneurial drive to design, turning founders’ complex ideas into intuitive experiences.
Natalia Bulashenko
Founder, Spark
At Arbour Partners, I led the design and worked with engineering to build v1 of Ara, a product that reimagined investor collaboration. Ara replaced static data rooms with a dynamic, shared workspace where fund managers and LPs could communicate, share documents, and manage relationships in one place.
Beyond design, I pitched Ara to 30+ investors across Europe, helping shape the product story and positioning around transparency, speed, and trust. The goal was to make capital raising feel less like paperwork and more like partnership, bringing real collaboration into an industry built on introductions.
Backed by Microsoft & Softbank
Netradyne 🦄 has been doing AI long before it was cool - building computer vision and deep learning systems for fleet safety since 2015. Backed by SoftBank, Microsoft, and Reliance, Netradyne reached unicorn status in 2021 with a $1B valuation and over $200M raised.
I joined as the first designer in the core team, working across engineering, data, and device teams to build v1 of the product, turning trial users into paying customers. I was also part of the team behind patent WO2019075341A1, focused on real-time computer vision and AI feedback for driver safety, shaping how intelligent fleet systems help drivers make safer decisions on the road.
Alex doesn’t just bring design to the table, he brings a philosophy grounded in rigorous data.
Prashanth Shankar
Founder, The Vinche
My work has never been about pixels or wireframes alone; it’s about building trust, simplifying chaos, and creating something people actually use. Design matters, but numbers are what make it real. Growth, retention, activation - those are the signals that tell you if the design truly works.
Some of these stories ended in funding rounds, others in pivots or lessons, but each one taught me that clarity, iteration, and measurable impact are what turn ideas into real progress.