He Built a Public Company. Now He Is Starting Over

He Built a Public Company. Now He Is Starting Over

From The Tech Trek by Elevano

May 13, 2026 · 29 min · Episode 666

About this episode

Rob Locascio discusses his journey of starting over after building a public company and the evolution of Uare.ai.

What happens after you build a public company, spend nearly three decades at the helm, and then find yourself starting over? Rob Locascio, CEO and founder of Uare.ai, joins The Tech Trek to talk about that exact journey. Rob previously founded LivePerson, helped create web chat for customer service, took the company public, and later scaled it into a major conversational AI business. Now he is back in founder mode, building a new company around individual AI, personal knowledge, and human control over data. This conversation gets into what it takes to return to zero, why strong ideas need more than belief, how Uare.ai evolved from a personal loss into a broader AI platform, and why Rob sees the current AI moment as bigger and more complex than the dot com era. Practical Takeaways • Ideas are not the asset. The ability to turn them into something people understand, join, and buy is what matters. • Starting over after success requires shedding the habits of scale and getting back into a true startup mindset. • The first version of a company may only be an entry point. The deeper opportunity often reveals itself through real users. • Rob believes the future of AI should include…

People in this episode

Host: Elevano

Guest: Rob Locascio

Topics covered

  • entrepreneurship
  • artificial intelligence
  • startup culture
  • business strategy
  • personal knowledge management

Keywords

  • public company
  • AI
  • startup mindset
  • entrepreneur
  • customer service
  • conversational AI
  • individual systems

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Uare.ai, LivePerson

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