Alex Christie (Attio CTO): The $116M Bet Against Salesforce and the AI Problem Every Founder Has

Alex Christie is the co-founder and CTO of Attio — the modern, flexible CRM taking on Salesforce, HubSpot, and a $180 billion market. Attio has raised over $116M from investors including Google Ventures, Balderton, and Point Nine, and is quietly building what could be the most important data infrastructure for the agentic AI era.In this episode we cover:Why Alex and co-founder Nick spent 3 years building before launching publiclyThe moment they finally admitted they were going after SalesforceWhy most AI companies are building on fundamentally broken data foundationsHow Attio is positioning itself as the database for AI agents at scaleWhat great engineering teams actually look like at a fast-growing startupThe one principle that compounded into raising $116M — persistence pays compounding returnsWhether you're building an AI company, hiring your first engineers, or thinking about taking on an established market — this episode is essential viewing.Subscribe for weekly interviews with the founders and investors shaping the future of technology.Founders & Builders is super proud to be partnering with CoreWeave, the Essential Cloud for AI. Check out CoreWeave.com to learn about how they serve some of the most important AI workloads on the planet.