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AI After Dark

AI After Dark

De : Alex Gras
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 AI After Dark is a podcast hosted by Alex Gras, venture capitalist at Mercury, focused on how real companies are built once the hype fades and the hard decisions begin. Through candid conversations with founders, CTOs, and operators, the show cuts through buzzwords to talk about people, systems, risk, and the trade-offs that actually matter. Alex brings a background as an operator, founder, and revenue leader, with a belief that technology matters, but people come first. This podcast is for builders who care less about trends and more about what lasts.2025 Digital Wildcatters, Inc Economie
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    Épisodes
    • Akhil Mantripragada from Pie

      Akhil Mantripragada from Pie
      Feb 24 2026

      Akhil Mantripragada from Pie joins Alex on AI After Dark to trace his journey from coding without a computer in eighth grade India to building a $100M+ revenue AI-native marketing platform for SMBs. He shares how changing seven schools growing up forced him to become adaptable, why he spent hours writing multiple code versions on paper with only one hour per week at a computer lab, and how selling his first ed-tech company to UTSA funded grad school at Columbia. The conversation reveals why Pi's first three hires were designers instead of engineers, his controversial belief that chat is the "lousiest way to interact with AI," and how meeting users where they're at - not where you want them to be - became the core design philosophy that lets three engineers do what used to take thirty. Plus, the framework for building modular systems where perfection lies in the architecture's inputs and outputs, not the code inside the black box.

      Click here to watch a video of this episode.


      Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.
      Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
      Apply today at collide.io


      Click here to view the episode transcript.

      00:00 Growing up moving between seven schools in India
      01:39 Learning to code without a computer access
      07:13 Starting an events management company as an introvert
      12:18 The arrogance and humility combination that drives builders
      15:12 First website job at UTSA and learning by doing
      18:01 Building quantitative literacy tracking system for professors
      24:17 Why school being too easy created entrepreneurial opportunities
      26:45 Columbia grad school and starting Edu Link collaboration tool
      35:14 The two acquisition experiences and MIT licensing lessons
      40:56 Blockchain land registry in India and creator platform experiments
      43:35 Why education will become skill-based not credit-based
      46:15 Joining Toast's New Ventures program and building benchmarking
      56:07 Recruiting A-players through bias for action and ownership
      01;02;40 Why Pi hired three designers before the first engineer
      01;06;54 Meeting users where they're at versus forcing chat interfaces
      01;12;48 The black box modularity philosophy for AI-native startups

      https://twitter.com/collide_io

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      https://www.facebook.com/collide.io

      https://www.instagram.com/collide.io

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      https://bsky.app/profile/digitalwildcatters.bsky.social

      https://www.linkedin.com/company/collide-digital-wildcatters
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      1 h et 17 min
    • Canisius Rozario from collide.

      Canisius Rozario from collide.
      Feb 18 2026

      In this kickoff to a new series, AI After Dark, Alex Gras (VC @ Mercury Fund) talks with Canisius Rozario (CTO @ Collide) about how he built a top-tier AI team in oil & gas without any industry background. It’s a sharp, candid look at hiring, learning fast, and building AI-first systems, packed with practical takeaways for founders, CTOs, and early builders working in high-stakes, data-heavy industries.

      Click here to watch a video of this episode.


      Join the conversation shaping the future of energy.
      Collide is the community where oil & gas professionals connect, share insights, and solve real-world problems together. No noise. No fluff. Just the discussions that move our industry forward.
      Apply today at collide.io


      Click here to view the episode transcript.

      0:00 Introduction and series kickoff
      1:50 Canisius career background and journey through tech
      9:30 Joining Collide and the decision to go AI-native
      20:00 First 90 days as CTO and the "sniff test"
      33:00 Why senior engineers beat junior hires in AI builds
      37:00 Incorporating oil and gas experts into AI model training
      41:45 The Forward Deploy Engineer model and how it works
      46:00 Prioritization process for POCs and customer feedback
      52:50 What to look for in the next generation of AI CTOs
      56:30 What does "AI native" actually mean and audience Q&A

      https://twitter.com/collide_io

      https://www.tiktok.com/@collide.io

      https://www.facebook.com/collide.io

      https://www.instagram.com/collide.io

      https://www.youtube.com/@collide_io

      https://bsky.app/profile/digitalwildcatters.bsky.social

      https://www.linkedin.com/company/collide-digital-wildcatters
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      1 h et 1 min
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