Alexis Alston is a seasoned investor, startup advocate, and tech evangelist. She began her career at a $3Bn AUM fund, Advantage Capital, investing in growing brands, AI, and healthtech companies like Recursion Pharmaceuticals (IPO: RXRX) with both debt and equity. She is now a General Partner at Lightship Capital, a family of funds valued at over $2Bn dedicated to investing in remarkable founders and funders where she leads the direct investing team supporting Lightship Capital Venture Capital Fund.
She also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Engineering at her alma mater, and ivy league school, Brown University. Currently she teaches within the Nelson Center of Entrepreneurship and leads the B-Lab program for entrepreneurship.
Most recently, she was awarded the designation of Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital. In addition, she supports the non-profit Lightship Foundation, where she forges Fortune 500 partnerships with the organization, and leads production for notable global award winning conferences.
In addition, Alexis served on the Entrepreneurial Council, an advisory board at Target Corporation, where she collaborates with Target to launch new programs towards their $2Bn commitment to working with diverse brands. In her spare time, she enjoys writing, and looks forward to a 2025 release of her debut book “Leadership without Limits”.
Company: Lightship Capital
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Alexis Alston : Thank you for having me — it’s truly an honor to be featured.
I’m Alexis Alston, a General Partner at Lightship Capital and a professor of entrepreneurship and engineering at Brown University. My work lives at the intersection of frontier technology, creative leadership, and transformative growth. I’m deeply focused on what it takes to build at the edge, not just chasing trends, but identifying the inflection points before they hit the mainstream.
At Lightship, I’ve had the privilege of helping our portfolio companies 10x their revenue, scale their operations, and collectively raise over $500 million in capital. I’ve worked with founders across industries — from deep tech to consumer platforms — helping them sharpen their strategy, move faster, and build category-defining companies. My approach is always rooted in clarity, velocity, and building infrastructure that can withstand both breakout growth and hard pivots.
Beyond investing, I teach at Brown University, where I help future entrepreneurs and engineers think like builders not just of companies, but of systems, futures, and new realities. I’m constantly asking: what does it take to build the future from scratch? That question fuels my work across the board — in the classroom, on cap tables, and on stage.
Whether I’m advising a founder, writing a first check, or re-imagining how innovation happens at scale, I’m here to unlock the kind of bold, technical imagination that drives real transformation.
Can you share with us your journey towards integrating AI into your business operations?
Alexis Alston : We built Lightship with AI in mind from day one. For us, AI isn’t a buzzword; it’s a foundational tool in how we think, operate, and scale. From the very beginning, we asked: how can we build a venture firm that thinks like a tech company? That mindset allowed us to integrate AI deeply into every layer of our business.
We use AI in our startup review process to help eliminate bias at the earliest stages. It allows us to assess opportunities based on core business potential rather than pattern-matching or instinct alone, which often reinforces old systems. This helps us make faster, more rigorous decisions without sacrificing the nuance that great investing requires.
For our portfolio companies, we go even deeper. One of the most exciting areas we’re leaning into is using AI to help brands tap into neuroscience and behavioral psychology, creating products and messaging that resonate at a subconscious level with their core customers. It’s not just about marketing. It’s about building brands that speak directly to the soul.
Internally, we also use AI to streamline back-end operations and remove friction from our systems. Everything from reporting to founder on-boarding to internal workflows has been optimized so our team can move faster and focus on the high-leverage work – the decisions that require real human intuition and creativity.
To me, AI is not about replacing people. It’s about removing the noise so people can do their best thinking. It allows us to be more precise, more human, and more visionary at the same time.
What specific areas of your business have been most impacted by AI, and how?
Alexis Alston : One of the most powerful impacts of AI on our business has been how it’s lowered the barrier to entry for entrepreneurship overall. We’re seeing a massive shift where non-technical founders can now build MVPs, design entire customer journeys, and even launch SaaS tools without writing a single line of code. That’s a game-changer.
In the past, early-stage founders needed capital just to hire engineers to get their ideas off the ground. Now, with AI tools at their fingertips, they can skip right to testing, iterating, and refining. It means we’re evaluating founders who come to the table with real traction, sharper positioning, and clearer signals on product-market fit.
For us as investors, it also means we’re spending more time assessing depth of thought. With so many technical barriers removed, the real differentiator becomes: How well do you understand the problem you’re solving? How obsessed are you with your customer? AI has made it easier to build, which raises the bar on how well you think.
We’re backing founders who aren’t just using AI to move fast, they’re using it to go deep. And that shift is changing everything about how we evaluate potential and how we help our companies grow.
How are you ensuring ethical considerations are taken into account in your use of AI?
Alexis Alston : Ethical use of AI starts with understanding the foundation. At Lightship, we are intentional about asking hard questions before we integrate any AI tool into our workflows. Who built the model? What data was it trained on? Are the training sets representative of the real world, or are they reinforcing old narratives? And just as importantly, what happens to the data once we have used the tool?
We believe AI should be accessible to all, but access without understanding is risky. It is not enough to just use the tools. We all need to understand how they were trained, how they make decisions, and where their limitations lie.
At its core, AI reflects the people who create and deploy it. And humans come with biases, both conscious and unconscious. So we approach AI as both a capability and a responsibility. It must represent the best of us: our intelligence, creativity, and curiosity. Not the worst of us. That is why we take time to vet the tools we use, audit outputs when necessary, and continuously educate ourselves and our portfolio companies on best practices.
Responsible innovation is not a one-time conversation. It is an ongoing commitment to asking better questions and designing better systems.
What advice would you give to other CEOs looking to integrate AI into their business?
Alexis Alston : My advice? Just start. Too many leaders get stuck trying to master every technical detail before they take action, but the truth is that AI rewards experimentation. You do not need to be an engineer to begin using it in a meaningful way. Start small, test tools in one area of your business, and build from there.
Look for places where your team is losing time to repetition or routine decisions. That is where AI can create immediate impact. Whether it is customer support, scheduling, content generation, or internal workflows, there are tools available right now that can help you move faster and think more clearly.
And AI is not just for your business. It is a powerful tool for optimizing your life outside of work too. I have used it to create meal plans, manage my schedule, design workout routines, and even brainstorm creative projects. The more you make it a part of your day-to-day thinking, the more natural it becomes to spot opportunities for automation and acceleration everywhere.
Ultimately, AI is not about replacing you. It is about creating more space for you to focus on the things only you can do. So do not wait for the perfect use case. Dive in, get curious, and let the tools stretch your imagination.
How do you see AI evolving in your industry over the next 5 years?
Alexis Alston : Everyone is talking about how AI will make everything faster, cheaper, and easier, and that is true to a point. But speed without discernment is just noise. Over the next five years, I think we are going to see a wave of companies launch quickly, raise quickly, and collapse just as fast. The barrier to entry is dropping, but the barrier to quality is still very real.
In venture, this means we will see a lot of firms chasing momentum instead of substance. The ones that will actually thrive are not just the most technical, but the most strategic. Firms that can see beyond the hype cycles and guide founders through complexity will stand out. That includes deep expertise in areas like systems thinking, human behavior, and storytelling, not just engineering.
I also think we are going to hit a saturation point with inflated valuations. Investors will eventually demand more than just “AI-enabled” as a pitch. They will want to see actual business fundamentals: customer obsession, defensible IP, and a real path to revenue.
So yes, AI will change everything. But the firms and founders who succeed in the next era will not just move fast. They will move with intention, with discipline, and with a deep understanding of the value they are actually creating- And Lightship will remain at the forefront.
