

Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
Inspired Capital
Inspired with Alexa von Tobel dives headfirst into conversations with the most ambitious people on the planet. Host Alexa von Tobel, Founder and Managing Partner of Inspired Capital, gets under the hood of guests’ ambitions, from pivotal childhood moments to the critical advice that shaped their life paths. What does it take to be a true visionary, one who stares down monumental challenges with grit and resilience? Learn directly from those builders and problem-solvers whose determination is shaping a brighter, more inspired future.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Oct 8, 2025 • 55min
Rebuilding Healthcare from Scratch with Founder Alan Tisch of Atria Health Institute
Atria Health Institute founder Alan Tisch is rebuilding America's healthcare system from the ground up. After two near-death experiences in his mid-20s revealed how broken preventive care truly is, Alan made it his life's mission to tackle a system designed to profit from sick people rather than keep them healthy. With a multidisciplinary team of 15 medical specialties and cutting-edge diagnostics, Atria is pioneering the preventive healthcare movement to extend not only lifespan but healthspan.
What You'll Learn:
Why the healthcare system profits from keeping you sick instead of healthy
How a $150 test can prevent heart attacks 20 years before they happen
The difference between healthspan and lifespan and why it matters
Why team-based care across specialties beats the traditional siloed approach
How to think about preventive diagnostics like whole body MRIs and genetic testing
Why now is the most exciting time for healthcare
Chapters:00:00 Intro02:40 Early Influences and Family Background06:38 Lessons from Building Spring10:25 The Birth of Atria Health Institute16:07 Why Healthcare Incentives Favor Sick Care20:20 What It's Like to Be an Atria Patient23:50 The Four Step Framework for Disease Prevention25:49 Health Fads: Overhyped vs Underhyped28:50 Genomics and Full Body MRI Scans for Everyone34:50 The Two Sides of Atria: Clinical Care and Research39:07 The Future of Healthcare43:58 Healthspan vs Lifespan47:03 One Thing You Should Do Tomorrow49:05 AI in Preventive Care52:00 Book That Changed Alan's Life52:46 Health Habit Alan Has Adopted
Follow Atria:
Atria Website: https://www.atria.org/
Atria LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/atria-institute/
Follow Inspired and Alexa:
Website: https://www.inspiredcapital.com/
Substack: https://alexavontobel.substack.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital/
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners/
X: https://x.com/inspiredcap

Sep 24, 2025 • 54min
How ShopMy is Revolutionizing Commerce Through Authentic Recommendations with Harry Rein and Tiffany Lopinsky
ShopMy co-founders Harry Rein and Tiffany Lopinsky are building the most sophisticated three-sided commerce platform that revolutionizes how creators monetize authentic recommendations, how brands scale through trusted advocates, and how consumers discover products through curated networks they actually trust. Powered by intricate product graph technology and advanced data infrastructure that maps millions of products across retailers, they're architecting the future of commerce driven by intentional curation rather than algorithmic impulse buying.
What You'll Learn:
Why the "curator economy" matters more than the "creator economy"
How their Circles feature creates personalized shopping through trusted networks
The product philosophy of minimizing "calories" in user experience design
How they thought through scaling ShopMy’s audience
Why authentic recommendations outperform traditional performance marketing
How complementary co-founder skills drive success
The "sweep the floors" mentality that keeps leadership embedded in daily work
Chapters:01:53 Intro03:30 From Boston Foodies to Engineering Complementary Backgrounds10:08 The ShopMy Genesis Solving Creator Monetization14:18 Breaking Down ShopMy Three Core Constituencies18:39 Introducing Circles Personalized Shopping Through Trust25:27 The Three Phases of Building ShopMy26:35 Product Philosophy Minimizing Calories in User Experience32:38 Cutting Through the Noise Where Shopping Journeys Begin34:32 Opportunities Scaling Creator Performance Marketing36:25 The Role of AI in Taste and Personalization37:49 From Creator Economy to Curator Economy44:10 Funding Strategy Building for the Long Term46:10 Building the Team The Sweep the Floors Leadership Philosophy52:20 Personal Discoveries What the Founders Buy Through Circles
Follow ShopMy:
• ShopMy Website: https://shopmy.us/home
• ShopMy Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/shopmy-/
• ShopMy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shopmy/
Follow Inspired and Alexa:
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital/
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners/
• X: https://x.com/inspiredcap
• Website: https://www.inspiredcapital.com/

Sep 10, 2025 • 43min
The Race to Build the First Scaled Quantum Computer with Jeff Thompson from Logiqal
World quantum expert and professor Jeff Thompson, founder of Logiqal, shares his journey from academia (at Yale, Harvard, MIT, and Princeton) to now building the first scaled quantum computer. He explains why the world needs this breakthrough, how Logiqal’s neutral atom technology makes it possible, and what it could unlock for medicine, materials, and the future of innovation.
What You’ll Learn:
What is quantum?
Why the world needs a scaled quantum computer
Jeff’s journey through Yale, Harvard, MIT, and now running a lab at Princeton
Why failure drives scientific discovery
How Logiqal is using neutral atom technology and ytterbium
What quantum could unlock for medicine and materials
How Jeff balances academia and entrepreneurship
How he sees the global race for quantum computing
Chapters:01:58 Intro 08:04 Quantum 101: Bits, Qubits, and Schrödinger’s Cat09:40 The State of Quantum Today: Early Days, Big Potential13:19 What Really Counts as a Quantum Computer?14:35 How Many Qubits Does It Take to Change the World?19:11 The Quantum Hardware Wars24:00 Why Yttrium is the Chosen Atom26:33 Rydberg Gates: Turning Interactions On and Off28:39 Founding Logiqal: The Challenge of a Lifetime31:01 Unlocking Quantum: From Pharma to Materials to Mars37:05 Quantum + AI: Partners, Not Competitors40:28 What Gets Jeff Out of Bed Every Morning41:07 Books That Shaped a Quantum Founder42:17 The Time for Quantum is Now
Follow Jeff and Logiqal:
Jeff Linkedin: http://bit.ly/46fkFav
Logiqal Linkedin: http://bit.ly/48aizLA
Follow Inspired and Alexa:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners
X: https://x.com/InspiredCap
Website: https://www.inspiredcapital.com/

Aug 20, 2025 • 1h
Building a Global Parenting Tool with Dr. Becky from Good Inside
Dr. Becky Kennedy from Good Inside shares her journey from private practice psychologist to building the #1 consumer parenting tool on the planet. She reveals how blending emotional connection with practical action helps parents raise resilient kids and become sturdier themselves.
What You’ll Learn:
• How Dr. Becky built Good Inside into a global parenting movement
• The secret to becoming a “sturdy parent” and raising resilient kids
• Why parenting feels hard even for good parents and how to navigate it with confidence
• How to break cycles of shame and foster deep connection at home
• The lessons Dr. Becky learned while scaling a mission-driven brand
• Good Inside’s future
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:58 Becky’s Origin Story
5:34 Parenting Genres of Our Generation
9:38 Early Career and Education
14:11 Internal Family Systems (IFS) Explained
17:19 Private Practice to Parenting Work
21:15 Instagram and the First Viral Posts
27:39 Founding Good Inside
30:34 Parenting as the Last Frontier
39:15 The Good Inside App and Vision
52:30 Broader Societal Impact of Parenting
56:04 Two Mantras Dr.Becky Uses
59:30 One Habit Dr. Becky Does
Follow Dr. Becky and Good Inside:
• Instagram: https://bit.ly/3H9UWIa
• Website: https://www.goodinside.com/
Follow Inspired and Alexa:
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspiredcapital
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inspired-capital-partners
• X: https://x.com/InspiredCap
• Website: https://www.inspiredcapital.com/

Aug 7, 2025 • 54min
How to Turn Failure into Moonshots with Astro Teller of X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory
What if the secret to solving impossible problems isn't avoiding failure, but learning to leverage it? Serial entrepreneur and inventor Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at X (Alphabet's Moonshot Factory), discovered this counterintuitive truth growing up in a family where intelligence was everything. The grandson of Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb, and a Nobel Prize-winning economist, Astro learned that being smart wasn't enough. He had to develop his creativity into his philosophy of "being yourself on purpose." Today, Astro is responsible for steering X’s projects—like Waymo, Dandelion, and Verily—through the bumps and scrapes they meet along the road to reality. In this episode, Astro shares how childhood stories of the Manhattan Project's creative community inspired X's culture, why he transformed from trying to outsmart employees to becoming a "culture engineer," and why intellectual honesty is the real key to turning science fiction into reality.

Jul 23, 2025 • 52min
How to Swing Big with Alex Hawkinson of BrightAI
What if we could predict infrastructure failures before they happen instead of scrambling to fix them after disaster strikes? Serial entrepreneur Alex Hawkinson quips that the Romans would be laughing at us if they saw our current approach to managing the critical systems that power our world. Known as the father of IoT for creating SmartThings—a platform supporting over one billion connected devices before its acquisition by Samsung—Alex is now tackling his most ambitious challenge yet: awakening America's crumbling infrastructure through physical AI. With nearly 500,000 sensors already deployed across water, energy, and essential services, BrightAI is shifting entire industries from reactive maintenance to proactive intelligence. In this episode, Alex shares how BrightAI's observability layer creates an unbreakable competitive moat, how his "swing big" philosophy attracts world-class talent, and why transforming infrastructure management represents humanity's next great technological leap forward.

Jul 9, 2025 • 58min
How to Ask the Right Questions with Ben Lamm of Colossal Biosciences
What happens when humanity faces the sixth mass extinction event in Earth's history? Serial entrepreneur Ben Lamm believes we need a backup plan. With a track record of building and exiting companies across AI, gaming, and conversational intelligence, Ben took on his most audacious venture in 2021: co-founding Colossal Biosciences with Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church to bring extinct species back to life. The company has already successfully de-extincted the dire wolf and aims to return woolly mammoths to the Arctic by 2028. In this episode, Ben shares how his self-described "unemployable" streak became his entrepreneurial superpower, why asking naive questions helps him tackle impossible challenges across industries, and how Colossal's breakthrough technologies represent humanity's essential insurance policy for planetary survival.
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Dec 23, 2024 • 30min
How to Innovate Without Compromise with Jon Perl of QA Wolf
With software powering every aspect of our lives, when does quality testing shift from a nicety to an absolute necessity? Despite the stakes, most companies fail to test everything—and even fewer automate their QA processes—leaving critical systems vulnerable to catastrophic bugs. Jon Perl is on a mission to change that. In 2019, he launched QA Wolf to help hundreds of companies automate 80% of their quality assurance processes, accelerating release cycles fivefold and saving customers over $100 million annually. By disrupting the outdated, manual QA status quo, QA Wolf empowers teams to ship faster and more confidently, delivering innovation without compromise. In this episode, Jon shares how a tech mistake sparked the idea for QA Wolf, how they settled on a pricing model that aligns incentives with their customers, and why he believes human-in-the-loop will remain essential until AI achieves flawless accuracy.

Dec 18, 2024 • 30min
How to Innovate at the Speed of Light with Nick Harris of Lightmatter
For 60 years, Moore's Law and Dennard scaling drove the exponential advancement of computers, making them faster, smaller, and more energy-efficient. But as Nick Harris explains, the era of transistor-based technology has reached its physical limits. The future of computing demands a new solution, and that solution is light. Nick founded Lightmatter in 2017 to fully transform AI data center infrastructure. By harnessing light to process and transmit data, Lightmatter is laying the foundation for the next generation of computing. The company invented the world's first 3D-stacked photonics engine and was most recently valued at $4.4 billion. In this episode, Nick shares why he chose to leave academia after receiving his PhD, how his go-to-market strategy hinged on building real friendships and understanding his customers' internal roadmaps, and why he believes that having an obsession is a gift.

Dec 11, 2024 • 31min
How to Pinpoint What Powers Your Growth with Avishai Abrahami of Wix
What if building a website wasn’t just for developers, but something anyone could do easily? This was the simple idea that led Avishai Abrahami to create Wix in 2006. What began as a no-code tool to help businesses establish an online presence has grown into a global platform that serves hundreds of millions of users. Under Avishai’s leadership, the company has reached many milestones including the launch of Wix’s first AI website builder in 2016—one the first commercial AI products available to consumers at mass scale. In 2013, Avishai took Wix public, and the company is currently valued at over $11 billion. In this episode, Avishai shares his take on what differentiates exceptional entrepreneurs from the rest, why he believes in meticulously tracking the most granular details, and how important it is to master the balance of seeking feedback while knowing when to trust your own judgment.