Austen Allred - Founder & CEO of Gauntlet AI on Innovation, AI, & Finding A Way

#266: Austen Allred is a technology entrepreneur, education innovator, and Y Combinator founder whose work has influenced the national conversation around workforce development, skills-based hiring, and alternative pathways to technology careers. He is the founder and CEO of Gauntlet AI an intensive AI engineering talent platform that partners with employers to identify and develop elite AI-native engineers. Previously, he co-founded Lambda School, later rebranded as BloomTech, one of the most recognized coding academies of the past decade, helping pioneer income-share agreements and raising more than $100 million from leading investors, including GV, Y Combinator, and Stripe.Before founding BloomTech, Allred co-founded the citizen journalism platform Grasswire and co-authored the bestselling growth-marketing book Secret Sauce. His perspectives on entrepreneurship, education reform, and the future of work have been featured in publications including Harvard Business Review, The Economist, WIRED, Fast Company, TechCrunch, and The New York Times. Today, he is widely recognized for his efforts to rethink how top technical talent is trained and deployed in the age of artificial intelligence.You can find Austen on X and Linkedin, as well as austenallred.com.Enjoy the show!