Building a company in the white-hot center of the AI revolution requires more than just a clever algorithm; it demands a ruthless commitment to talent and a stomach for controversy. Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, the CEO of Artisan, has lived this reality at high velocity. His company became a household name in the tech world through a marketing campaign that screamed at San Francisco commuters to "Stop Hiring Humans," yet the internal reality of Artisan is far more nuanced. While the firm sells Ava, an AI-powered Business Development Representative (BDR), its own survival has depended on navigating the brutal complexities of human capital. The marketing engine fueled by rage and recognition Artisan didn't climb to prominence through quiet networking. It used a provocative, almost "rage-baity" strategy to slice through the noise of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. The "Stop Hiring Humans" billboards were a calculated risk that paid off in massive brand awareness and category leadership. For Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, the backlash—including death threats—was a price worth paying for a platform that allows the company to reach enterprise customers and top-tier talent. This aggressive positioning created an immediate market pull, proving that in a crowded field, being polarizing is often more effective than being polite. However, the campaign's irony is lost on no one. Despite the external messaging, Artisan relies on a core group of 40 humans. The discrepancy highlights a fundamental truth about the current state of automation: AI is excellent for replacing specific functions, like outbound prospecting, but it cannot yet replace the visionary leadership or complex problem-solving of a high-growth team. The marketing wasn't a literal command to automate everything; it was a stake in the ground for a future where AI handles the drudgery while humans handle the strategy. Brutal lessons in the early-stage hiring grind The path to a stable 40-person team was littered with casualties. Jaspar Carmichael-Jack admits that the company has hired over 100 people to reach its current headcount. This churn wasn't a failure of vision, but a series of expensive lessons in the "Goldilocks zone" of startup talent. One of the most common pitfalls was "logo shopping"—hiring candidates simply because they had Google, Stanford, or Netflix on their resumes. These prestige hires often failed because they couldn't adapt to the scrappy, resource-poor environment of a startup. Another critical error was over-hiring for seniority too early. Bringing in a VP of Sales from a global corporation when you only have two sales reps is a recipe for disaster. These executives often expect infrastructure—product marketing teams, ready-made assets, and established processes—that simply don't exist in a nascent firm. Conversely, hiring someone too junior and expecting them to lead a complex department is equally risky. The lesson is clear: index on raw intelligence and communication skills rather than the logos of previous employers. Why over-hiring is a growth killer There is a common misconception among founders that more people equals faster scaling. Jaspar Carmichael-Jack argues the opposite. After raising a $12 million seed round, he initially moved too aggressively on headcount, attempting to hire general managers and various specialized roles. He quickly realized that a larger team often creates more drag. Managing 50 people is exponentially more difficult than managing 10, particularly when it comes to maintaining mission alignment and cultural cohesion. In the early stages, every team member should be stretched thin. If a salesperson or customer success lead isn't feeling slightly overwhelmed, the company is likely over-staffed. This lean approach ensures that every hire is absolutely necessary and that the company maintains its agility. Autonomy and the "firefighting" nature of a startup are exactly what top-tier talent craves; adding too much management layer too early stifles that energy and slows the product development cycle. The uncomfortable necessity of fast firing If hiring is an art, firing is a survival skill. Jaspar Carmichael-Jack describes firing as his least favorite part of the job, comparing it to a relationship breakup but with higher stakes. However, he emphasizes that being slow to fire is one of the most damaging mistakes a founder can make. Sitting on a bad hiring decision for weeks or months helps no one. It degrades the culture and slows the company down. The key to a healthy high-growth environment is transparency and radical feedback. No employee should ever be surprised when they are let go. If the firing comes as a shock, it means the leadership failed to communicate expectations or provide the necessary feedback. Founders must be decisive: either put someone on a performance improvement plan (PIP) with clear metrics or let them move on to a role where they can actually succeed. Keeping a "good but not great" employee is a silent killer of excellence, as it permanently lowers the bar for every subsequent hire. Integrating AI agents into the human workflow As Artisan moves toward releasing Ava 2.0, the relationship between AI "employees" and human teams continues to evolve. Currently, most AI agents function as advanced software rather than full colleagues. However, the trajectory is moving toward a more immersive experience where AI participates in Slack channels and joins video calls. This shift is both exciting and threatening to the traditional workforce. For Artisan customers, the integration of Ava hasn't led to mass layoffs but to a more strategic reallocation of human resources. In large enterprises, Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) are moving away from repetitive email outreach and focusing on high-value tasks like cold calling and relationship building—areas where AI still struggles. The goal is a hybrid model where AI handles the volume and humans handle the nuance. As Jaspar Carmichael-Jack looks toward the future, the message remains the same: build for scalability, embrace the controversy, and never lower the bar for the humans you choose to keep.
Isabelle Johannessen
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Why Elite Athletes are Swapping Gala Nights for Scalable Software Charitable giving is broken. For decades, the industry relied on golf tournaments, silent auctions, and high-dollar galas. These events demand months of planning, consume massive operational overhead, and shut out everyday donors. When the pandemic hit in 2020, this fragile model collapsed overnight. Enter Kyle Rudolph, a 12-year NFL veteran, and Jon Walburg, a veteran sales leader. Together with NHL player Jason Zucker, they recognized that traditional fundraising could not scale. They built Altru, a professional fundraising platform designed to democratize charitable giving. By replacing elite $10,000 golf outings with accessible $10 sweepstakes, they transformed a local charity initiative into a venture-backed startup. Their journey on the TechCrunch podcast Build Mode, hosted by Isabelle Johannessen, offers a raw look at founder-market fit, early scaling mistakes, and the power of strategic networks. The Failure of the Ten Thousand Dollar Ticket Before launching their tech startup, the co-founders ran a charity called Athletes for Minnesota Kids. The premise was simple: partner with professional athletes to raise money using traditional methods. Their marquee event was an exclusive golf tournament costing $10,000 per foursome. While the event successfully raised $130,000 in its first year, it revealed glaring systemic issues. The planning process felt like a grueling full-time job. It required six months of intensive coordination, project management, and high-friction sales. When the team set a goal to raise $200,000 the following year, the 2020 pandemic forced them to cancel everything. Revenue dropped to zero. This crisis forced a radical realization. It is exponentially easier to convince 10,000 regular people to give $10 than to secure one donor willing to write a $10,000 check. Zucker had previously proven this micro-donation concept by raising $1.2 million for a children's hospital through crowdfunding. The team took this concept, sketched a business plan in a Minnesota coffee shop, and launched their web platform six months later. Inside the Hybrid Social Impact Engine Altru operates as a dual-engine machine: a consumer software platform and a licensed professional fundraiser. This structure allows them to sit at the intersection of celebrity influence, high-value sweepstakes, and compliant charitable giving. Raising Money is a Marketing Challenge Most non-profit organizations face a structural paradox. If they spend money on marketing, watchdog groups penalize their efficiency ratings. This restriction stunts their growth. Altru solves this by acting as a third-party, for-profit engine. The platform takes on the marketing risk, builds the digital infrastructure, and distributes the final proceeds to the charities. This setup allows them to acquire donors at scale. According to internal data, over 94% of the platform’s participants are donating to their chosen charity for the very first time. Winners take home sports cars or custom celebrity experiences, while the charities secure a fresh pipeline of highly engaged recurring donors. The Danger of Outsourcing Early Corporate Vision Success came fast, and with it came a dangerous trap. In its first year, Altru secured an official partnership with the National Football League to run 32 simultaneous campaigns for the Walter Payton Man of the Year award. Operating with just two founders and a part-time intern, the team pulled off a massive operational feat, raising half a million dollars. Exhilarated by this early win, the founders made a classic mistake: they scaled their team before nailing their long-term operational model. Believing they lacked the specialized corporate experience to grow a major tech platform, they hired a large, expensive team and stepped back from daily operations. This move led to an immediate identity crisis and a cash drain. The lesson was sharp and immediate: you cannot outsource your core product vision to external hires. The founders had to step back into active leadership, realign the business, and wait for revenue to catch up with their overhead. Democratizing Access to Celebrity Culture The true defensive moat of this model is not just celebrity access; it is regulatory compliance and execution. The company is registered as a professional fundraiser, navigating complex legal requirements across different states. This operational complexity makes it difficult for copycat startups to replicate their success. For celebrities, the platform offers a low-effort, high-impact way to support causes without managing the operational administrative burden of a private foundation. It turns star power into immediate, scalable social impact. Building Your Own Network Without a Super Bowl Ring You do not need a professional sports career to build a high-octane company. The core lesson of founder-market fit is about finding and leaning into your unique, unfair advantage. Every founder possesses specialized knowledge. Whether you are an expert in medical technology, logistics, or software architecture, you must turn that expertise into public influence. Share your insights on digital channels, educate your target market, and actively place yourself in rooms where you are challenged. Your network is your net worth, but it requires deliberate construction. Find your edge, design a scalable solution, and refuse to let traditional models dictate your ceiling.
Dec 4, 2025The global supply chain is choking on a critical bottleneck. While highways overflow with semi-trucks, thousands of miles of freight railways sit severely underutilized. The culprit is transloading—the slow, dangerous, and capital-intensive process of moving cargo containers between roads and tracks. Kevin De, a veteran logistics expert and CEO of Glīd, built a solution. His company designed an autonomous road-to-rail vehicle system that transforms this chaotic multi-step transition into a single, seamless movement. This engineering feat recently earned Glīd the prestigious Startup Battlefield cup at TechCrunch Disrupt, vaulting the early-stage startup into the national spotlight. The Transloading Bottleneck and the Highway Crisis Modern logistics relies heavily on highway transport, creating severe driver shortages, high emission rates, and massive traffic congestion. Meanwhile, freight rail remains one of the most fuel-efficient ways to move heavy cargo, yet rails lack the flexibility to handle the final miles of delivery. Bridging this gap requires specialized hubs where massive cranes, terminal tractors, and multiple crews manually shift shipping containers. It is slow. It is expensive. It is dangerous. De launched Glīd to serve as a direct bridge. By enabling cargo containers to transition autonomously and mechanically from asphalt directly onto rail tracks, Glīd aims to balance the shipping corridor. The goal is simple: shift heavy freight load off the highway system and onto existing, open rail capacity without requiring massive infrastructure overhauls. A Three-Product Ecosystem Built for Compliance Building heavy industrial hardware is notoriously difficult, particularly in sectors governed by strict federal safety mandates. Glīd bypassed typical regulatory roadblocks by splitting its rollout into three distinct, interconnected products. This multi-pronged suite allows customers to deploy solutions immediately while the company refines its fully autonomous, long-term tech. Glīderm The Glīderm serves as the manned entry point into the ecosystem. Because it utilizes a human driver, it sidesteps the complex regulatory approvals typically required for autonomous heavy machinery. Capable of operating on both public roads and rail lines, this hybrid vehicle allows railroads and industrial hubs to immediately optimize container movements under existing Department of Transportation and Federal Railroad Administration frameworks. Raiden For closed, private facilities where federal road rules do not apply, Glīd offers Raiden. This fully autonomous, unmanned vehicle handles yard marshalling, port operations, and localized logistics. Raiden solves a severe labor crisis. Heavy equipment operator roles are aging out rapidly, and younger workers are rejecting these grueling, high-risk positions. Raiden fills this operational void directly. Ezra 16 orchestrating this physical hardware is Ezra 16, Glīd's proprietary artificial intelligence engine. This software creates a real-time digital twin of the active industrial yard. It aggregates dynamic weather conditions, track variables, and vehicle telemetry to coordinate movements. This integration provides shippers with complete operational visibility while lowering brokerage and dispatch overhead. Veteran Instincts and Risk Tolerance in Hard Tech De's background shapes Glīd's aggressive building style. With a career spanning military logistics, SpaceX, and Northrop Grumman, De brings a rare operational depth to founder life. He notes that veterans make exceptionally resilient founders because military service conditions individuals to accept extreme risk to serve a larger purpose. This high risk tolerance allowed Glīd to secure more than $70 million in customer commitments and establish partnerships with five major railroads, even before winning Startup Battlefield. During the grueling preparation for the competition, De focused on execution over hype, pushing his lean team to coordinate live demonstrations across multiple states simultaneously during inclement weather. Mindfulness Over Panic When host Isabelle Johannessen called De to tell him that Glīd made the competitive top five, his response was not to draft investor emails or panic-practice his slides. Instead, he went to meditate. This focus on internal clarity underpins the entire company culture. Glīd hires based on a strict cultural framework centered on four rungs: a higher power, family, self-care, and commitment to the company's mission. De believes that when employees take care of their physical and mental health first, they build a foundation strong enough to handle the immense pressure of scaling a heavy industrial startup. With $100,000 in fresh prize money, a growing backlog of railroad pilots, and an active funding round, Glīd plans to expand its engineering and field operations teams. The company is actively deploying its first commercial vehicles to industrial test grounds, proving that the future of heavy transit is already on the tracks.
Nov 27, 2025The Art of Targeting the Untargetable Traditional go-to-market playbooks often fail when confronting highly sensitive, guarded, or hyper-specific consumer groups. When standard advertising channels fall short, building a startup requires a shift from standard performance marketing to radical community integration. For companies trying to capture audiences like teenagers or formerly incarcerated individuals, growth is not about viral loops. It is about earning deep, unshakeable trust and turning extreme constraints into a primary competitive edge. Two startups from the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield network demonstrate how to crack these difficult markets. Luna, co-founded by Jas Schembri-Stothart, acts as a digital big sister app for teenage girls navigating adolescence. Meanwhile, Untapped Solutions, founded by Andre Peart, serves as a marketplace and case management platform linking untapped populations—including formerly incarcerated individuals and domestic violence survivors—with corporate employment opportunities. While their end users reside in vastly different worlds, both founders bypassed standard digital marketing to build highly customized, community-first growth engines. Earning Trust Through Lived Experience and Ambassador Networks The Luna Approach: Teen Co-Creators To build a platform that teenagers actually wanted to use, Luna had to overcome a basic structural hurdle: the founders were no longer teenagers. Instead of guessing what would resonate, Jas Schembri-Stothart and her co-founder launched a literal school roadshow across the UK, presenting wireframes directly to students and absorbing blunt feedback. This grew into an organized "ambassador army" split into two distinct factions: product ambassadors who help refine features, and social media ambassadors who create organic, peer-to-peer TikTok content. By letting teenagers drive the narrative, the app achieved viral organic reach that no adult-led campaign could replicate. The Untapped Solutions Approach: Credibility via Shared History For Untapped Solutions, trust is built on personal history. Founder Andre Peart spent six years in New York state prison during his twenties, an experience that directly informs his company's mission. When marketing to individuals re-entering society, having a team with lived experience is the ultimate trust signal. The platform bypasses traditional consumer acquisition by integrating directly with the institutions where these populations already exist, including prisons, hospitals, and shelters. Rather than fighting for individual sign-ups, every organization onboarded brings hundreds of users directly into the ecosystem. Solving the Dual-Audience Puzzle Both startups operate in dual-sided ecosystems where the person utilizing the service is not the one paying for it. For Luna, the users are teenagers, but the paying customers are parents. This forced the team to build two completely isolated marketing funnels. They utilize TikTok for teen engagement, while relying on Meta platforms to reach parents, communicating themes of safety, data privacy, and adolescent support. Similarly, Untapped Solutions must balance the needs of vulnerable job seekers with the business requirements of corporate employers. Andre Peart structures his enterprise pitch around real business value, refusing to position his platform as a charity. To ease employer concerns regarding legal records and transitional hurdles, the platform attaches caseworkers directly to candidate profiles, showing progress and certifications transparently. They win over corporate decision-makers through compelling story-driven email campaigns and case studies highlighting corporate peers already participating in fair-chance hiring. Guerrilla Marketing and Thought Leadership When standard ad networks are too noisy or expensive, alternative distribution channels are vital. Luna embraced guerrilla marketing, famously taking a giant, custom-branded spinning wheel to a Taylor Swift concert in London. Despite being threatened with removal by security, the team interviewed a major influencer on-site, generating viral social content that drove immediate app downloads. Conversely, Untapped Solutions established dominance through educational authority. Instead of paying to attend crowded industry events as general attendees, Andre Peart focused on securing keynote speaking slots. By positioning himself as a leading technical expert in the re-entry space, he established a national re-entry coalition that hosts workshops, ultimately leading to their own dedicated industry conferences. Elevating the Bottom-Up Playbook These strategies prove that the most durable businesses are built by embedding directly into user communities. Whether mobilizing teenagers to run a social media account or building software alongside social workers, success depends on true operational intimacy. Founders who reject generic digital marketing playbooks in favor of deep, boots-on-the-ground engagement can transform their audience-access limitations into an insurmountable competitive moat.
Nov 20, 2025