Member Spotlight: Alex Ge

Meet Alex & Rena Labs

Jordan: Thanks so much for doing this, Alex. I would love if you could just start off with a brief intro — your name, your company, your role, and a brief overview of what you do.

Alex: Sure. I'm Alex, I'm a co-founder of Rena Labs, and we are doing data privacy infrastructures. And right now we are kind of cooking a new AI proactive agent based on the infrastructures to enable everyone — you can use the agent to handle your follow-up needs, your outbound, inbound needs, without violating your privacy.

Jordan: So you said this is like a lab, so you create multiple products. What are some examples of other types of products you guys have built out?

Alex: The first product we are building is infrastructures. So it's like a middleware to enable anyone to share your private data to another one. And based on these infrastructures, we work with many financial institutions, help them share their trading order books to their clients, to their investors. And for that product, it's only B2B. But based on that, we also think we should expand into retail. That's why we have our second product, which is the AI agent, to embed with the same privacy stack, but enable anyone to use this agent to handle their daily tasks — not just for the institutions, but if they are BD, they are a marketer, or they are ops, they have a lot of meetings, and then they can just use the agent to summarize their meetings and also give the action items. And at the same time, they have to connect with their social medias, like their LinkedIn, email, calendar, whatever. And they use the same infrastructures to make sure that no one can see their private data, but the agent can still use it. So that's why we have different products based on the same infrastructures with privacy.

From Note-Taker to Proactive Agent

Jordan: So privacy seems to be the key thing to highlight here. Note-taking and AI is a very prevalent, pretty competitive space — there are a lot of strong established companies out there. How do you guys differentiate yourself among them?

Alex: To be honest, I think note-taker is a pain in the ass for a long time, in the past 20 years. So many great companies building on it. I really like Granola, for example. They did a really good job in the note-taking. But I would say we did two more steps than the normal note-taking, even for Granola. The first step is we don't give you just the summaries. We give you the action items, which is the to-do list. Because usually when we have the meetings, you won't review the summary all the time. What we should do is what you should do after the meeting — follow with your clients, or get a proposal to follow with them, or even do some outbound or some inbound requests, right? That's what we should do after the meeting. Besides that, we think human beings are really good at reviews but not good at the execution. That's why we dedicate this kind of work to the agent. So the agent will just give you something you should do. The agent gives you the answers you should review. And after you give the consent, the agent will help you do the follow-up. We also provide you the proposal you need, or even give you some new leads on your social medias. That's why we are very different from other passive note-takers. I think we are pretty active and proactive.

Jordan: That sounds amazing. My role — at the Founders Club, I'm the Chief of Staff. I always take a ton of meetings and have a ton of to-do lists, and things can be kind of scattered. So I definitely see how that could be so helpful for any kind of operator in any kind of role. I'd love to hear more about what the platform looks like, though. Is it kind of Granola style where you start the meeting and turn it on? And do all of these tasks and projects exist within the platform, or does it connect to a Notion or a preferred platform?

Alex: I would say the UI is very different from Granola. It's more like Codex or Claude. Because when you download the app, of course, we will ask you to connect with your calendar. And then when the notification is coming out, like we say you have an upcoming meeting, we will pump up a notification to invite you to join the meeting. After that, it will auto-end. But the magic begins after the meeting. So after the meeting, the agent, Alice, it will give you the to-do list you have — like Codex, it will have different tasks. And then it will run by itself. After they finish the task, it will pop up the new notification for you to review. And then you can decide if you want to send it or not. And that's the UI, the UX, I would say.

Jordan: Does this integrate with teams? Or is it just an individual person — you have your own nodes and tasks?

Alex: Actually, it's a team. Because we're building on the infrastructure level, we built them for the past two years. And after we got around one million ARR for our infrastructures, we decided to expand in the retail side, because we think the agent is a really, really huge opportunity. That's why we started working on this new product three months ago. At the time, productivity is really popular among SF and also New York. That's why, for myself, because I have so many meetings every week, like more than 30 or even 40, I just designed it for myself to use. And then I think, okay, it seems like not just me, because there's so many people, they're a little bit non-technical, or they have purely BD or sales — they don't know how to build up their own pipeline. What about we build a product to cover their needs? That's the drive why we have this new product. And up to now, we already got more than 300 beta-tested users, because we didn't do a public launch. We probably would do it next month.

Landing the First Customers

Jordan: Exciting. And I love what you said about designing the product for yourself. As a founder, it's probably very easy to sell to other founders and operators and small teams. But I'd love to hear more about the early days talking with the customers. You mentioned you're doing beta users right now — how did you get these customers? How did you get in touch with these people?

Alex: It's really funny. Every day you will receive a lot of outbound requests from email, from LinkedIn, or from whatever social media you're using. And every time when I saw them send me some messages, I would think about how did they find me, or what kind of messages they're drafting. And then I realized, what about we can have some agent to do it for myself — but it's not shitty. Because sometimes they even make some mistakes about my name, or even my company. So I want to do something different, or even customize for different profiles. That's how it drives me to think about it. And also every day, when I have 10 meetings a day, and I have to do all the after-meeting tasks, each one may be only 10 minutes. But imagine if you have 10 meetings, it will take you one hour, or even two hours if it's very heavy. So that drives me to have these needs and discuss how to do the pipeline to automate all the works. That's how we pitched some people who pitched me before. And then they say, oh, this is interesting, I'd love to give it a try. And then we do some demo, and they feel like, oh my God, this is amazing, I would definitely use you guys. That's how we got the first users we have. And after that, of course, because I'm a founder, I know so many BDs, sales or marketing I knew before. I just sent to them. So very luckily, we already got one B2B unicorn who promised to use us. Because for this product, the problem is, if you want to build on B2B, usually they can't just download something they don't know, especially for a startup. So you have to talk to one of the heads or one of the BD leads, and they request, say, we need this product, then it can increase our efficiency, then we can use it. So we pitched them around four times, and eventually they onboarded us. So right now, all their BDs — they have around 50 BDs — and all of them using us. So that's really great progress for us.

Jordan: Exciting stuff. So remind me — these beta users, are these people providing direct feedback on the product, or people out using the product now?

Alex: All of them are still using the product now, because we still need them to give us a lot of feedback. But I would say right now, the current product is ready to go, but we still need to add some new automations, or support more versions, because right now it only supports the Mac users. But we believe that a web version and also a mobile version can also work great to onboard more different customers. Because some of them have the meeting in person, or some of them don't use Mac, they use Windows. That's why we will have more versions, and then we can launch in August.

The Biggest Lesson: Become the KOL

Jordan: That's important stuff, and I'm sure you've learned so much through the feedback. Looking back, is there anything you wish you would have known, or done differently — any hard lessons you had to learn?

Alex: I would say if I travel back to the time I started my company, I would say, do the KOL. Because at the time, I happened to have some articles I published, and it was really, really popular. I got more than one million views. But at that time, I told myself, oh, I'm a founder, so I should only focus on the product, only focus on the things I'm building, right? But turns out with AI, I didn't realize that AI can be so powerful that engineer work is not the barrier anymore, to be honest. I would say how to find your customers, how to convince them — you need a lot of distribution channels. So if you as a founder, you are the KOL by yourself. The founder-led marketing is the most effective way, or the cheapest way, to promote your product. If you have some great ideas you want to share, don't lose your chance to be a KOL. You should just keep going out and post more videos and do some content, right? But at that time, I only focused on the B2B products. So I built on the infrastructures. We don't do any posting in LinkedIn or even in Twitter. So I would say that's the biggest one, for myself.

Differentiating in a Sea of Content

Jordan: There's a huge lesson in there, and I feel like it's something we see with pretty much every founder these days. You scroll through LinkedIn, so much of it is just AI slop, there's so much content, it's kind of hard differentiating yourself. So how do you approach that? How do you differentiate yourself in a sea of content always being produced?

Alex: I would say I'm more like vibing, because I'm not like most founders. They only talk about — especially SF founders — every time when I meet them, they only talk about, oh, what's the ARR of our product? Oh, what I'm building recently. But they never talk about themselves. They never talk about their life, what's their personality. But I prefer to talk about some random questions. It's very meaningful as a founder, or just as a pure tech person — you have to care about how do you balance your life with your work, or how do you find your co-founder, or something like that. I would like to talk about these general questions. This kind of questions is easier for me to find the echo from others, not just talk about yourself or your product all the time, because nobody wants to listen to your blah, blah, blah all the time. They want to know something funny part of yourself. That's what I learned when I do my own content, because I try to cook some content by myself right now. And I received some views, around 2K, 3K views for real. That's a good start. But I would say most people, they don't care about what I'm doing. They care more about, oh, this one seems funny, we should follow him about his opinions, not about their work.

Jordan: He's got a good vibe. I feel like that's an important lesson too — people want to work with people they like. So when you say you like sharing stuff about your vibe and your personality, what kind of content is that? You mentioned one post going super viral. What kind of stuff has worked for you?

Alex: For example — when I first started my company, actually I started from the UK. And then right now I relocated to the US. But actually, I never studied or lived in the UK and the US before. So basically, I start from zero to one. I don't know anyone there, in both countries. So every time when I meet someone, they say, oh, where do you live? I say, I used to live in China and I moved to the UK, I spent four years there, and right now I'm living in the US. They ask, oh, you studied in the UK before? And I say, no, I just have my startup there. So I just share something very unique and different. And people will realize, oh, that's kind of different, because I never meet someone like me. Or I will share some opinions like — for example, how many people you need if you want to build a new startup? So most people say, oh, if you raised 100 mil or 200 mil, you should hire as many as possible and move fast, blah, blah, blah. But I will tell them, why should I hire so many people? I prefer to work as a boot team, like five people or even six people. Because even when I was working at a big corporation, when I first graduated, I joined investment banking. Even it's a big team, but each team, when we handle one IPO, one M&A, only three or four people. And everyone just work more than 100 hours, and then you have to handle your job by yourself, nobody can help you. And I prefer to bring this culture into my startup, so it will decrease the communication costs. And I will battle with other founders who have different opinions about it. Ask them, okay, tell me how many hours you spend on your products and how long it will take you to do your update. We update our product every day, basically every day. But how long will it take you if you have a 20-people team or a 30-people team? So that kind of shit I talk about in the social media.

Building a Young Team

Jordan: Company culture, company values. So what's your team look like right now? How many of y'all are there?

Alex: We only have seven people. Because thanks to AI, we don't need to hire that many senior people. We only need one senior person with different young people. The average age in our team is only, I think, 23, to be honest. Because most of them just graduated already. I think we prefer to hire someone very young. They join our team as an intern and then we convert them into full time. That's the easiest way. And also they're really, really hardworking compared to the senior engineers from Meta, from Google. We used to hire them before, to be honest. But after working with them maybe for several months, I don't think they're fitting our culture, or fitting the product itself. Because right now we don't need someone who has experience before. We need someone who is very smart, who knows how to solve some problems they never met before. I would say that's why young people stand out, not the senior people. So that's my choice.

Jordan: So you're choosing to work with 23-year-olds. Can I ask, how old are you?

Alex: I'm just turning 26, just last month.

Jordan: Happy late birthday. You're so young to be on your second company already. It's incredible.

Alex: Yeah, because when I started my first company, I was only 21. That's why I think that's also the culture, why in my team I prefer to hire someone younger. Because if I'm 40, sometimes I feel like it's really hard to communicate with them. I don't say that if you're free, you should not start your own company — you have different preferences. For example, if I'm 40, sometimes you will say, I have to hang out with my girlfriend, or my wife, I have to babysit my kids. But in our team, I will say, oh, let's just do the Friday night cooking. And then we just gather people together, and we just work together for the whole night, and publish a new version. But imagine if your team are full of 30s or 40s, I think it's not reasonable to ask your teammates to do that, because they also have their family, they have their life. It's not reasonable to ask them to do that all the time. But that's the privilege as a younger founder.

Founder Life: Energy, Balance & Routines

Jordan: This is such a funny take, and I hear you. When I was in college, I was pulling all-nighters, drinking all this caffeine. And it's funny — I say this as a 26-year-old, I'm the same age as you. But I think this would be a great time to transition more into you as a founder and how you operate. It sounds like you have a pretty intense team culture and that works really well. How do you balance everything? How do you keep your energy levels up? How do you stay sane?

Alex: I would say personally, I don't feel tired and anxiety at all, because that's my personality. I always like high-energy people. That's why I think I'm really good as a founder. But my co-founder, he's totally opposite with me. He talks to someone for like two hours, he needs another two hours to settle down, to calm himself down and regain the energies. So internally in our team, I would say we have a really great balance. Because sometimes if you feel tired, you talk to me, oh, I will cheer you up. But if you need someone to say, I'm really, really tired, I really need to take a rest — my co-founder will tell them, oh, I feel you, because I have the same feeling like you. So I would say that's a really great team.

Jordan: Balance is important, honestly. It sounds like you guys complement each other in great ways. So if you don't have issues with being tired or stressed — do you feel the need to have certain routines, or a sleep schedule? How does that look for you?

Alex: I don't have a very tight sleeping schedule, because sometimes I have to work with my staff engineers. So it's really normal for me to work until 4 to 5 a.m. But because I usually will block all my mornings, I don't need to get up so early. That's good for me. But I do have a habit to help me release my pressure, to some degree. Every time when I have a call, like a standup with my co-founder, I will choose to run around like 30 minutes in the gym. Because sometimes my co-founder will say, Alex, do you know sometimes you feel really angry? I don't know why you're shouting at me. And that's why I use this way to make myself feel really tired physically. So I don't raise my voice when I talk to my co-founder, and then he won't feel like, oh, you're really angry with what I'm building. And it's really good for both of us to talk about the things without anybody angry, and then move those things faster.

Jordan: This is so interesting. A lot of people have the issue of being too tired. If you're working founder life, 60, 80-plus hours a week, a lot of people struggle with feeling too tired and being low energy. It sounds like you kind of have the opposite problem — maybe being a little bit too high energy, maybe coming across a bit angry. Is that the issue that you find yourself having?

Alex: I would also feel tired, to be honest. But the way is a little bit different, because I can add on my energy when I'm talking to someone new. So that's how I combine my work with my life, very great. Because when I feel tired, sometimes I feel, oh, it's so boring to build on some products I already know, or just do some QA tasks with my product. So I would choose to talk to someone I never knew before. I will connect someone on LinkedIn, or just around some communities. I would say, oh, who would love to grab a drink or grab a coffee and talk about something you are building? And then I can learn something new. That gives me more energies. And I feel like, oh, this is so interesting, I feel so excited to try something new. That's why I can always feel energetic again and work on my own stuffs. Not just always focus on my product, but also learn from others.

Something Surprising

Jordan: I love that. It sounds like you're very cut out for the kind of work that you do — this is all very CEO-coded. It must be so helpful that you get energy from all these types of interactions. So, moving on — you talk about yourself being very high energy, getting a lot of energy from meeting new people. What is something people would be really surprised to learn about you?

Alex: I would say a lot of people think, okay, I'm really passionate and energetic, maybe I'd really like to hang out with a lot of people. But actually, I prefer to meet people under four or under five. Because sometimes when you always go out with a bunch of people, like more than five or even ten, it's really hard to get a deep conversation. I prefer to get a deep conversation maybe for one to two hours. Otherwise it's just a short run, I'll say hello to everyone in ten minutes, add their LinkedIn, add their WhatsApp, and then circle back to them. I prefer to focus on one or two persons in each event I went to, and get to know what they're really building on, and ask them questions — not pitch them about my idea, because I really like to learn something new every time when I go out. And that reflects my personal life. I prefer to travel alone, to be honest. Because I really like to not have any schedules. I'll just walk around and check, ask my GPT to give me the plan immediately, and then stick to the plan by that time. I never make the plan in advance. That will give me the feeling like, oh, I have to follow this routine, step by step — I don't like that way. I prefer to do something randomly.

The Co-Founder Dynamic

Jordan: Traveling alone, that's very exciting. Alex, I'm curious. You said you're a co-founder and you are totally different — you're very high energy, you love acting spontaneously. Your co-founder, it sounds like, is a little bit lower energy, maybe introverted. He's a CTO, so I'm assuming very detail-oriented. How do you guys avoid conflict? How do you stay on the same page, even though internally you might like to operate differently?

Alex: I would say that depends on our role and the parts we handle in our startup. He's very introverted, and he doesn't like to talk to people, but he still needs to give the feedback from the users, from VCs, from our partners. He will also handle some talks or communications. But he will have the final say when we have some fights about what's our next update, what's our next version, the function we should prioritize. These kinds of functions I will always listen to him, even though I don't agree with him. But I will say, okay, you have the final say. Even though I think we should have this function first, if he insists, I will say yes. And maybe for the fundraising speed, or for talking to some partners, or to onboard some new customers — if I say this is really, really important, we have to prioritize it in front of any of the other clients. And then he will say, okay, let's pause a little bit on other updating and follow up this client's needs first to win this client. So that's why we have different say in different parts. For marketing, I have the final say. For the product, for the technology, he has the final say. So that's why we fight each other a lot of times, to be honest. Like every day we have some quarrels. That's why he says, Alex, don't shout at me, I understand the product better than you. Okay, fine, fine, fine. Let's slow down and go back to see what the problem belongs to. Is it the technical problem, or is it the BD client's problem? And then we will say, who has the final say of that problem?

Jordan: Got it. So you have your own separate responsibilities, and even though you discuss and fight on all the major issues, in your own separate responsibilities different people have the final say.

Alex: Yes, correct. And in some very important occasions, I prefer to hand it to him to choose, because he's more considerate, he's very good at thinking, much better than me. I'm more good at execution and also finding more people we need. That's why I trust him. Because before our startup, actually we did some projects separately, like four times, before we officially started our company. That's why we already have some co-founder experience, even at the time we were not co-founders. That's why we have the trust base, and we're already working on this project for more than two years.

Jordan: Is he the same co-founder from your first company, or a totally separate team?

Alex: Actually it's a totally separate team. Because my first time, I got out of that team. My co-founder at the time, he wants to build on something about robotics. That's why we didn't continue. And this one, because I knew him from my first startup — someone mutual, some investor, introduced us together. But at that time, we don't plan to build something together. At that time, he wants to onboard me as his client in his startup. So that's how I know him. But after we chat a lot of times and hang out, we think, okay, it's pretty funny, we should do something together. That's why we do some side project first. And after four side projects, we think maybe we can do something for real. That's how we start.

Why New York

Jordan: One other thing I was looking forward to hearing from you — your experience in New York. You mentioned you lived in London before this, and you were in China before that. Are those all the places you've lived? And what led you to sticking in New York specifically?

Alex: Before I decided to work in New York, I've already traveled here for more than 10 times, back and forth from London to New York. I would say New York is really, really amazing, because I can meet anyone, basically anyone — not just about the work, but also about my life, like some musicians or some artists. Or I like to play some poker games, and there are some poker games here, and there are so many different people. When I travel in other cities, maybe Barcelona, maybe SF, I post on LinkedIn or Twitter — no one will DM me saying, oh, I want to meet you, I think what you're building is really funny. But if I live in New York, even for traveling, I post about it, and someone will DM me — I don't know them before — they'll say, oh, it seems very funny, let's just meet up. I really, really like this vibe, to meet someone totally new I don't know before. They're really open-minded, and that drives me — I'm very attracted to New York, I would say. That's why I love it. And I think I will stick to New York rather than other cities.

Jordan: There's something so special about New York. So much of it too is all the walking, the public transportation — it's so easy to interact with people, the friction is so low. Do you have any stories of great interactions you've had, or people you've met up with?

Alex: Every week I will meet five or six people I don't even know. Last week I met someone who is a trader — he used to work in a hedge fund, and he quit his job for two years, he didn't work at all in the past two years, but then he decided to be a blogger, an influencer on TikTok. I really like his videos. Every day he will talk about some new concepts, not relevant to his work, not about the trading, but about daily life — about how to judge others, how to learn from others, how to focus on yourself and live by your own. Even though he has a girlfriend. So it's really, really funny.

Lessons from the Second Time Around

Jordan: Awesome. Mike, do you have any follow-up questions? I think that kind of wraps up all the stuff we have on the agenda.

Mike: Alex, I'm so curious — you're so young, but you've been a founder for a while now. What are you doing differently with your second company that are lessons you learned from your first company?

Alex: When I was doing my second company, it's a time like I put myself really in the position as a founder. Because to be honest, when I first started my first company, I was just a newbie, I was like a kid. So even though my role is co-founder, as CEO, I don't realize that this company is relying on me. Sometimes I will feel a little tired, so I actually just have fun, I don't work, and I don't feel that much pressure, especially from my investors, from my teammates, from all my employees. But in my second company, I feel like when I make some decisions, I will feel more responsibilities from others. It's like I have to make the decisions fast and accurately if I want to make my startup survive. Not just do something funny and think, oh, this is only about work, if it doesn't work, it's fine. No, I won't say that. I will feel like there's a burden on my shoulder as a founder. And I definitely will make it. If I don't make it, it's my mistake, it's my responsibility as a founder. So that's very different, I would say.

Mike: It sounds like you're just taking it more seriously — really stepping into the world as the founder, CEO. It was all new to you, you didn't even realize.

Alex: When you do your startup, you always meet some hardships, some hard times, right? Nobody is always really great, or always does awesome work. That's why you have to realize, even if you meet some difficulties, you have to stick to it. Not because you think you can make it, it's also because there's so many people relying on you. And you have to take the example for them, and that's the time that can give you more power, more incentives to say, okay, you can do it, definitely you can do it, and stick to it. And then once you believe, really believe in it, I think probably you can make it. Like we say, fake it until you make it. You have to fake it, make your body feel like you can make it, and then you can really make it.

Alex Ge is the Co-Founder and CEO of Rena Labs, a data privacy infrastructure company building AI agents that act on your behalf without exposing your private data. Its new proactive agent, Addis, connects to your calendar, email, and messaging platforms to summarize meetings and automatically handle the follow-up work that comes after them. Alex started his first company at 21 in the UK before relocating to build in the US. Originally from China and based in New York City, Alex has been an active member of NYC Founders Club since 2026.