{"podcast":{"title":"The Tech Trek","slug":"the-tech-trek-1219400","podcast_index_feed_id":1219400,"rss_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/1473c954/podcast/rss","website_url":"https://www.elevano.com","image_url":"https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/production/podcast_uploaded_nologo/3331325/3331325-1657138394242-e92168ee9041c.jpg","author":"Elevano","episode_count":683,"summary":"The Tech Trek is a podcast about building and leading technology companies. Each episode features founders, CTOs, engineering leaders, and operators sharing how they make decisions around product, engineering, AI, data, teams, hiring, and growth.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-10T08:21:52.633787+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-tech-trek-1219400"},"episode":{"title":"He Built a Public Company. Now He Is Starting Over","slug":"he-built-a-public-company-now-he-is-starting-over","published_at":"2026-05-13T19:50:59+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-tech-trek-1219400/he-built-a-public-company-now-he-is-starting-over","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-tech-trek-1219400","url":"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thetechtrek/episodes/He-Built-a-Public-Company--Now-He-Is-Starting-Over-e3jaupo","audio_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/1473c954/podcast/play/119945464/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-4-13%2F424093256-44100-2-e3adcdb3b1fd4.mp3","summary":"What happens after you build a public company, spend nearly three decades at the helm, and then find yourself starting over? Rob Locascio, CEO and founder of Uare.ai, joins The Tech Trek to talk about that exact journey. Rob previously founded LivePerson, helped create web chat for customer service, took the company public, and later scaled it into a major conversational AI business. Now he is back in founder mode, building a new company around individual AI, personal knowledge, and human control over data. This conversation gets into what it takes to return to zero, why strong ideas need more than belief, how Uare.ai evolved from a personal loss into a broader AI platform, and why Rob sees the current AI moment as bigger and more complex than the dot com era. Practical Takeaways • Ideas are not the asset. The ability to turn them into something people understand, join, and buy is what matters. • Starting over after success requires shedding the habits of scale and getting back into a true startup mindset. • The first version of a company may only be an entry point. The deeper opportunity often reveals itself through real users. • Rob believes the future of AI should include individual systems built from a person’s own knowledge, voice, and data, not only large aggregated models. • The current AI wave has stronger infrastructure than the dot com era, but also more pressure from incumbents and government involvement. Timestamped Highlights 00:33 Rob explains Uare.ai and its approach to building AI around individual human knowledge. 01:17 The LivePerson story, from inventing web chat to building a large conversational AI company. 03:13 What it felt like to leave the company he spent 28 years building and become a founder again. 06:04 The personal and family tradeoffs of…","meta_description":"What happens after you build a public company, spend nearly three decades at the helm, and then find yourself starting over? Rob Locascio, CEO and founder…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1749,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-tech-trek-1219400/episodes/he-built-a-public-company-now-he-is-starting-over/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-tech-trek-1219400/he-built-a-public-company-now-he-is-starting-over.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}