Making Humans Irreplaceable: James Lo & Anish Acharya on building & scaling Ethos

In this 40 Minute Mentor episode, we’re joined by James Lo, Co-Founder of Ethos, and Anish Acharya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, for a conversation about building the most human AI tech in a crowded market. Since their Series A just three months ago, Ethos has grown 84x, scaled to eight figures per month in revenue, and onboarded hundreds of thousands of experts joining the platform weekly. Not to mention, they’ve done all of this with a lean team of eight people. In this episode, we dig into what it actually takes to build an AI-native company from Day One, why differentiation emerges through shipping (not strategy), and the genuine strategic tension of choosing London over Silicon Valley to build. Episode Chapters: ➡️ The origin story of Ethos & why Anish decided to invest in them [04:00] ➡️ Growing 84x in just three months [14:15] ➡️ Differentiation in a crowded market [20:00] ➡️ Mistakes Founders make when scaling fast [23:15] ➡️ London vs San Francisco [29:00] Enjoyed this episode? Keep up to date with all our latest episodes by hitting the subscribe button on your favourite podcast platform. And for any feedback on what you enjoy most and ideas on what we can do to make 40 Minute Mentor even better, please leave us a review.