Tech Can't Save Us

Hosted by Literal Humans

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221

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Oct 2026

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About the show

A podcast for tech founders and operators building the next generation of mission-driven tech companies. Each episode, host Paul David (Founder/CEO of Literal Humans) sits down with a CEO, founder, or innovator and digs into the key questions that separate companies that scale from those that stall: What's going on in your sector? What's your path to category leadership? How's your product? Do your customers truly love it? How sharp is your go-to-market (GTM) strategy + execution? Who are your senior leaders? How are their personal and professional experiences shaping your growth trajectory? Paul has led two B2B SaaS-focused growth consultancies (formerly, marketing agencies called Optimist and Literal Humans) and helped scale leading companies including Wise, Payoneer, Oura, Oyster, Chipper Cash, Remofirst, Playbook, and Grey — several to unicorn status. The throughline of every conversation: Stories from the front lines of using cutting-edge GTM/RevOps/Growth/Marketing strategy + execution alongside tech leaders to solve the most pressing issues (climate, health, education, finance, future of work/talent/HR, etc.) of our time.

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October 15, 2026Episode 5525 min

S4 Ep55: Modernizing the Bill Pay Experience with Steve Kramer, VP of Product of PayNearMe

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Steve Kramer, VP of Product of PayNearMe, a fintech platform that helps businesses simplify and accelerate the way they collect payments. PayNearMe brings every major payment type into a single platform, from Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo to cards, ACH and cash at more than 62,000 retail locations across the US. They discuss the friction points that still make paying a bill harder than it should be, and how the expectations of the “everything-now” economy are forcing billers to rethink the payment experience. Steve explains how PayNearMe balances high-security payment architecture with a seamless user interface, and why its ability to accept cash at retail sets it apart from digital-only competitors. He also unpacks how digital wallets lift conversion for billers, how electronic check solutions keep returns and fraud in check, and how payment behaviour data helps clients improve their collection rates. The conversation covers the industry’s shift from digital-first to mobile-only, the hurdles of growing in highly regulated sectors, and how to balance custom features for Fortune 500 clients against a scalable, universal product. Steve also looks ahead to real-time payments as a catalyst for growth and explains how PayNearMe competes with legacy processors that hold vast market share but innovate slowly. Drawing on more than 25 years in payments and his roots as a Virginia Tech computer science graduate, he shares his leadership philosophy and his approach to communicating technical roadmaps to non-technical executives. Find more about PayNearMe here: https://www.paynearme.com/ Follow Steve Kramer here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ADD-STEVE-KRAMER-PROFILE

October 8, 2026Episode 5432 min

S4 Ep54: Revolutionising Last-Mile Logistics: Inside the Future of Drone Delivery with Beth Flippo, CEO and Founder of DEXA

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Beth Flippo, CEO and Founder of DEXA, a Dayton-based autonomous logistics company transforming last-mile delivery from the birthplace of aviation. Spun out of TELEGRID Technologies in 2021, DEXA designs, manufactures and operates its own FAA-certified DE-2020 drone, turning two-day shipping into deliveries in under 15 minutes. They discuss how drone delivery is shifting from futuristic novelty to everyday infrastructure, and why Beth sees an emerging autonomy economy as the next evolution of the gig economy. Beth explains how DEXA’s roots in secure defence communications shape its approach, from the encrypted mesh networking behind its AeroGRID+ swarm technology to the customer-facing platforms that link retailers’ orders to real-time flight operations. She also unpacks what makes DEXA rare in the sector: as one of only four fully integrated drone manufacturer-operators in the US, alongside Amazon, Google and Zipline, it controls the entire delivery ecosystem end to end. The conversation covers the long road through commercial aviation regulation, which saw DEXA become only the seventh US company to secure FAA Part 135 Air Carrier certification, alongside a nationwide BVLOS waiver. They explore how DEXA turns pilots like its early Kroger partnership into lasting integrations, what investors look for after its $15 million seed round, and which signals tell the team a city is ready for drone delivery. Beth also shares how two decades in financial technology at UBS, Goldman Sachs and Cantor Fitzgerald prepared her for founding a deep-tech company, the steep learning curve of moving from CTO to CEO, and her advice for women building hardware businesses in tech and aviation. Find more about DEXA here: https://www.flydexa.com

October 1, 2026Episode 5330 min

S4 Ep53: Commercialising Earth’s Last Empty Orbit: Building Satellites for Very Low Earth Orbit with Anatolii Papulov, Founder & CEO of NewOrbit

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Anatolii Papulov, Founder & CEO of NewOrbit, a Reading-based satellite manufacturer opening up a band of space that has been written off as too hostile for commercial flight for sixty years. NewOrbit is building the world’s first commercial satellites designed to operate reliably in Very Low Earth Orbit (VLEO), between 200 and 300km, powered by its own in-house air-breathing electric propulsion system. They discuss why VLEO has sat empty since the dawn of the space age, with aerodynamic drag, atomic oxygen and aerodynamic torque meaning a conventional satellite at that altitude survives weeks rather than years, and why an increasingly crowded, debris-heavy Low Earth Orbit makes the case for a self-cleaning orbit more urgent than ever. Anatolii explains why almost every subsystem has to be rebuilt from scratch to keep a satellite alive at 200km, and how NewOrbit’s AURA air-breathing thruster turns a few days in orbit into five years. He also makes the counterintuitive economic case: for the price of one conventional satellite, customers could fly a whole fleet of smaller VLEO satellites delivering up to 20x better imagery, alongside 5G direct-to-device connectivity and live HD video from space. The conversation covers what it takes to scale a European deep-tech company towards a first launch in 2028, from closing an oversubscribed $18.5 million Series A led by Voyager Ventures to hiring thirty scientists and engineers in a field where the skills barely exist as a category, and selling infrastructure rather than a consumer service. They explore the sovereignty argument for a UK-led VLEO capability at a time when Europe has none of its own. Anatolii also shares his journey from stargazing in rural Siberia to physics research in collaboration with MIT, how he and co-founder Ruslan Rakhimov split the work, and the conviction it takes to bet a career on unlocking a single orbit. Find more about NewOrbit here: https://neworbit.space/

September 24, 2026Episode 5227 min

S4 Ep52: Navigating the Age of Attention Scarcity with Claire Coady, Founder of The Attention Practice

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Claire Coady, Founder of The Attention Practice, a specialist communications consultancy built for what Claire calls the “Age of Attention Scarcity“. Drawing on more than 20 years of advising global brands, governments and NGOs, Claire and her team fuse brand and media strategy, audience research, information risk and the science of attention to help organisations cut through in an overwhelmed world. They discuss why attention should be treated as a finite resource, and why it now belongs on every CEO’s agenda rather than being left to the marketing team. Claire explains the tipping point that led her to found a practice dedicated entirely to attention, and how the battle for attention changes when the subject is complex or sensitive rather than commercial. She walks through her approach to designing strategies that sustain attention rather than simply capturing it, from applying behavioural change insights to building a brand’s defences against the attention hacks used to spread disinformation. The conversation covers the realities of scaling a human-first, research-led consultancy in an AI-driven information environment, including how generative AI is complicating the attention problem, how the “Can We Have Your Attention?” podcast and Claire’s Substack attract government and institutional clients, and how she bridges the cultural attention gap across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Claire also shares what award-winning, high-budget campaigns and shoestring projects have each taught her about attention, how she thinks about risk and resilience, and how her commitment to social progress as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts shapes her day-to-day work. Find more about The Attention Practice here: https://www.theattentionpractice.com/ Follow Claire Coady here: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/clairecoady

September 17, 2026Episode 5125 min

S4 Ep51: Taking Specialist Anxiety and OCD Care Off the Waitlist with Mona Potter, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Strategy Officer of InStride Health

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Mona Potter, MD, Co-Founder and Chief Medical Strategy Officer of InStride Health, an insurance-based virtual provider of specialty anxiety and OCD treatment for young people aged 7 to 26. Founded by two Harvard-trained clinicians who spent over a decade building intensive anxiety programmes at McLean Hospital, InStride delivers a purposefully time-bound course of care, typically four to eight months, through a dedicated three-person team of therapist, exposure coach and psychiatrist. They discuss why treatment with decades of evidence behind it still fails to reach most families, blocked by long waitlists, a shortage of specialists and geography rather than by any gap in the science. Mona explains the InStride model: cognitive behavioural therapy with exposure at its centre, delivered virtually so that practice happens in the places where anxiety actually shows up, at school, in a restaurant, at home, rather than in a clinician’s office. She points to the outcomes InStride publishes every year, including 97% of graduates showing clinical improvement and fewer than 1% being hospitalised in the year after finishing the programme. The conversation covers what it takes to scale specialty care without thinning it out: going in network with major commercial insurers, expanding state by state, and using technology, including AI trained on InStride’s own clinical data, to support care teams while every clinical decision stays with a clinician. Mona also shares what nearly two decades inside the Mass General, McLean and Harvard Medical School system taught her about the distance between care that works and care families can actually get, and why she left to build something that closes it. Find more about InStride Health here: https://www.instride.health/ Follow Mona Potter, MD here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mona-potter-md-28ba2179/

September 10, 2026Episode 5027 min

S4 Ep50: How Proofed is Humanizing AI and Creating a Better Editorial Model with Adam Harvey and Kiran Chauhan, Co-Founders of Proofed

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Adam Harvey and Kiran Chauhan, Co-Founders of Proofed, the editorial partner behind some of the fastest-moving content teams in the world. Proofed combines a global network of hand-picked expert editors with proprietary technology, giving businesses a fully managed editorial desk that scales with their content volume rather than their headcount. They discuss how the editorial landscape has been reshaped by generative AI, and why volume without quality control has become one of the biggest risks facing content teams. Adam and Kiran explain what humanising AI-generated work actually involves in practice, from stripping out the flatness and repetition that makes readers disengage to catching the bias, insensitivity and quiet factual errors that LLMs introduce. They also unpack the mechanics of the model itself: a dedicated editorial team matched to the client’s subject matter, overseen by a Service Delivery Manager, running 24/7 and costing less than a single in-house editor. The conversation covers what it takes to scale a service that depends on top-tier human expertise, including the bottlenecks of recruiting and training editors, staying ahead of good enough AI tools, and building a trans-Atlantic company across the US and UK while serving clients from early-stage startups to Fortune 500 teams. Adam and Kiran also share the personal side of the story: Kiran’s route into editorial via computer science, building surveying and large-scale event operations, Adam’s pivot out of a technology career at American Express, and how both approach the balance between scaling a startup and family life. Find more about Proofed here: https://proofed.com/ Follow Adam Harvey here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjohnharvey/ Follow Kiran Chauhan here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiran-chauhan/

September 3, 2026Episode 4929 min

S4 Ep49: Revolutionizing Retirement for Small Businesses with Dan Beck, CEO & Co-Founder of 401GO

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Dan Beck, CEO & Co-Founder of 401GO, a fintech platform that uses integration and automation to deliver affordable, simple and accessible retirement savings for small and medium-sized businesses. Founded in 2017 after Dan tried and failed to find a workable 401(k) for his own team, 401GO has built its technology in-house to strip out the administrative burden that has long kept smaller employers out of the market. They discuss why the traditional 401(k) model still fails smaller employers. Financial services follows assets, advisers are compensated on them, and a plan starting near zero carries higher fiduciary risk than almost any other product an adviser can sell, so the incentives never line up. Dan explains how automation inverts that maths, taking a set-up process that averages six to seven weeks industry-wide down to minutes, and replacing pricing that needs a decoder ring with a structure an owner can actually read. He also makes the case that a 401(k) is a culture tool rather than just a benefit, and that the hardest part of saving is what he calls the first dollar hurdle, which an employer match exists to clear. The conversation covers how 401GO scales without losing the people-matter ethos behind it, from payroll integrations and strategic partnerships to the harder problem of reaching small business owners who have no spare hour to spend learning about retirement plans. Dan gives his read on whether larger financial institutions moving into the small-plan market is a threat or a validation of the model. He also reflects on a route into fintech that ran through more than a dozen startups and exits including TekMat and HydroBlu, what a private pilot’s discipline lends to running a company, and how he decides when an idea is worth pursuing and when it is time to move on. Find more about 401GO here: https://401go.com/ Follow Dan Beck here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielgbeck/

August 27, 2026Episode 4823 min

S4 Ep48: Revolutionizing Personalized Diagnostics and Global Health with Jari Närhi, Co-Founder of NADMed

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Jari Närhi, Co-Founder of NADMed, a Finnish health technology company that is redefining personalized diagnostics and global health. NADMed has developed a breakthrough method for extracting and measuring nicotinamide adenine dinucleotides (NADs)—critical biomarkers for metabolic health, aging, and disease management. They discuss how the medical landscape is transitioning from the age of genomics into the age of metabolism. Jari explains the fundamental role NADs play in cell-level metabolism and regulating hundreds of metabolic processes. He highlights how NADMed has revolutionized the field by shrinking a process that previously required million-dollar mass spectrometry machines and weeks of waiting into a simple, rapid kit that clinical laboratories can use to get results in hours. The conversation covers the challenges of scaling a global medtech brand from Finland, including navigating complex regulatory paths like the FDA’s de novo pathway and educating the broader medical community on metabolic measurement. Jari also shares key insights from his 30-year leadership journey across information security and healthcare tech, explaining his philosophy on capital efficiency through strategic research partnerships and why honesty, trust, and respect remain universal leadership truths. Find more about NADMed here: https://www.nadmed.com/ Follow Jari Närhi here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jari-n%C3%A4rhi-38b44/?skipRedirect=true

August 20, 2026Episode 4728 min

S4 Ep47: Humanizing AI Transformation with Nikki Barua, Co-Founder & CEO of FlipWork

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Nikki Barua, Co-Founder & CEO of FlipWork, an AI transformation partner building the human operating system for the agentic era. FlipWork helps organisations close the gap between the speed of AI and the speed at which their people actually adapt, turning judgement, context and experience into measurable, repeatable capability. They discuss how becoming an agentic enterprise differs from traditional digital transformation, and why intelligence becoming universal makes advantage increasingly personal. Nikki explains the cultural barriers leadership teams hit when they first integrate AI, and how FlipWork’s methodology is deliberately built to protect uniquely human capabilities rather than automate around them. She walks through the platform itself: the FlipFactor diagnostic that measures how people work with AI and whether their environment supports them, the applied Sprint that turns personal context into working AI systems, and the Agentic Leader credential earned through demonstrated outcomes. The conversation covers how FlipWork differentiates itself in a crowded market of consultancies pivoting to AI, the role the Reinvention Roadmap newsletter plays in client acquisition, and the tension between bespoke organisational change and a scalable, repeatable product. Nikki is candid about the real growth constraint — whether it is technical talent or AI-ready mindsets in the C-suite — and the question executives keep asking her behind closed doors about the future of their workforce. She also shares the story behind building her own table: arriving in America with little more than ambition, three master’s degrees, five languages, and 25 years spent proving that the most powerful technology on earth is still the human being. Find more about FlipWork here: https://www.flipwork.ai/ Follow Nikki Barua here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nikkibarua/

August 13, 2026Episode 4625 min

S4 Ep46: Bringing Deal Intelligence to Private Markets with Eric Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of Claira

This week on Tech Can’t Save Us, host Paul David is joined by Eric Chang, Co-Founder and CEO of Claira, an AI-powered deal intelligence platform for financial institutions, backed by Citi and Barclays, that turns complex legal and financial documents into actionable data. Built by a team of former bankers and investment professionals alongside technologists, Claira focuses on private markets, including private credit, private equity, and commercial real estate, where the deal process has barely changed in decades. They discuss how private-market investing still runs on an antiquated, manual process of NDAs, virtual data rooms, Excel models, and PDFs feeding a tribunal-like investment committee that says yes or no with no real way to learn or scale. Eric, a CFA charterholder who managed risk on more than $1.5 trillion in assets at BlackRock, Morgan Stanley, and AQR before founding Claira, explains why a data-first approach is the real unlock: rather than just bolting agents onto documents, Claira first stitches all that scattered deal data into a single intelligence layer that the AI can then run on top of. The result behaves like an executive assistant that never leaves, where firms simply email Claira to track deals, log information, and answer questions while a durable, queryable data foundation quietly builds underneath. The conversation covers the hard reality of selling into tier-one financial institutions, from the incumbents’ trap and notoriously slow procurement to why the trick is finding the individual stakeholder and making it easy to start small rather than boil the ocean. Eric also shares how his investor’s brain shapes the way he thinks about growth, treating every product and marketing decision as a risk-reward trade-off, and why he believes B2B selling is more emotional than B2C when a buyer’s professional reputation is on the line. He closes with advice for founders: don’t agonise over a linear career path, pick a problem and a group of people you genuinely want to serve, and let curiosity carry you somewhere interesting. Find more about Claira here: https://www.claira.io/ Follow Eric Chang here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eric-chang-cfa-74086319/