Maxime Germain

Founder at Beside

@maximegermainn

1 episode · 2 moments · last on 22 Nov 2025

22 Nov 2025Intercom, BackedVC $100M, Beside $30M, TabPFN-2.5, Alex Karp, Molly O’Shea, Bryan Johnson

59:3010 min

Alex Karp x Molly O'Shea: Viral Interview & Founder Brand

The hosts break down Molly O'Shea's viral walking-tour interview with Palantir's Alex Karp, which hit ~2.1M views and covered Palantir's record earnings, Karp's feud with short sellers, his new book, and his sword-and-fitness persona. They discuss how founder-as-brand (Karp, Musk, Jobs) humanizes companies — especially defense-adjacent ones — and argue UK and European figures could learn from the gamified, media-savvy US approach to politics and company building.

1:20:2023 min

Maxime Jama: Beside's $32M Series A & AI-First Phone App

Maxime Jama explains how Beside operated in stealth for 18 months under the codename 'M1,' reaching $4M ARR and 20,000 paying customers by ignoring tech-Twitter hype and marketing to 'real economy' users — tradespeople, construction workers, even priests. He traces the origin from selling his mental health app to Alan, getting obsessed with conversation as untapped AI context, and rebuilding the phone and messaging app AI-first, with the AI answering your calls as the core value prop. He covers the $32M Series A from Index Ventures and EQT, plans to expand across platforms and into teams, Apple's Siri versus a possible OpenAI device, and why he now believes putting a face on the product matters.