Founder Leadership

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Nectar Social

Before launching Nectar, an AI-native social operating system, in 2023, sisters Misbah and Farah Uraizee spent years working at Meta—Misbah in product and Farah as an engineer. While there, they watched the way consumers discovered, discussed, and shared products shifted from public feeds into private channels, communities, and DMs. They saw brands struggling to keep up with that behavior—and the growing number of places where customers were talking about them.

What surprised them most was how little room brands had to respond to it.

Marketing teams were running lean while being asked to manage more channels, build relationships with customers and creators, and defend every dollar to their CFOs, said Misbah. The kinds of interactions that can make a brand memorable aren’t always the easiest to measure.

“There’s a constant push from a C-level to constantly be thinking about ‘How do I justify the spend that I’m doing in these channels if it’s not in paid media?’” said Misbah.

That realization shaped Nectar’s approach: using AI to help small teams manage the growing number of conversations happening around their brands.

Nectar, Misbah said, can surface comments and DMs, respond to customers, recommend products, and connect hidden social interactions with purchase data. According to their website, Nectar has worked with brands including Babylist, Caraway, Goop, and Daily Harvest.

“AI is like a scale multiplier; it’s going to help multiply your voice. It’s going to help multiply your team, but it’s not going to invent your brand,” Farah said.

Built together

Trust has also shaped the way the sisters run Nectar.

Misbah, who serves as CEO, leads product and is closely involved in sales. She’s often the first to hear what customers want. Farah, the company’s CTO, leads the engineering organization that turns those signals into product.

“She’s osmosis in my calls. I’m osmosis in her meetings,” Misbah said.

Farah says the two of them are “customer obsessed,” and that has become a central operating principle at Nectar. If they hear the same problem from customers five times in a week, they want to know whether it belongs on the road map.

“That’s how you win,” Misbah said. “You build something that customers are actually going to use and you do it the fastest.”

The downside: There isn’t much separation between being sisters and being co-founders.

Misbah described dropping Farah off after a customer dinner. They had spent the car ride talking about Nectar, and when Farah got out, Misbah called her phone again—this time realizing they hadn’t talked about their personal lives.

“Nectar was top of mind,” Misbah said. “We’re interchanging personal with work all the time.”

Read more about the Uraizee sisters’ approach to running Nectar.—JL

      

Sponsored By Capital One Business

When Kirsten Dermer’s brother built skateboard ramps in a backyard, nobody planned a business. But when ESPN showed up looking for X Games courses, skate park design was suddenly a thing, an industry her family helped pioneer.

Thirty years later, Spohn Ranch has 100 employees building parks and pump tracks across the US.

Running a company that pours concrete in 40+ states means tracking a lot of spending. So when Dermer’s project manager told her about the Capital One Venture X Business card, she listened.

Listening paid off. Her team now builds expense reports, checks vendor charges, and sees exactly what’s spent on every project in real time.

And Venture X Business card’s built-in alerts tell Kirsten when an employee is about to hit their spending limit, so she’s up-to-date in real time.

Your business card should work as hard as you.

Growing Your Business

Morning Brew Inc.

The world’s biggest private startup is turning its eye to small businesses.

OpenAI’s newly formed small and medium-sized business team has rolled out a new starter pack of partner plug-ins meant to help founders begin using AI for their businesses. The collection spans prebuilt workflows and skills around payroll, sales, and bookkeeping from the likes of HubSpot, fintech company Mercury, small business-focused CRM HoneyBook, and HR platform Gusto.

Margaret Ann Seger, who leads product for OpenAI’s growth team, said small business owners can expect more offerings tailored to their needs as the frontier AI company homes in on a segment of companies that makes up a major chunk of the US GDP and workforce. It’s not the only AI provider that’s been doubling down on this segment lately.

“There’s just a huge economy here that is pretty underserved,” Seger told us. “We’ve spun up this team to start helping folks discover that a bit more intentionally and scale it within their teams.”

Read more about Open AI’s tools for small business.—PK

      

Sponsored By Capital One Business

A backyard business. A three-decade legacy: Spohn Ranch is a 100-person business designing skate parks across the US. What they don’t sweat anymore are expense reports, vendor charges, or spending limits. The Capital One Venture X Business card handles all of it, from flagging double charges to tracking employee spending limits. Earn double miles on every purchase.

Vantora, formerly UP.Labs, raised $100+ million from Silversmith Capital Partners. The platform allows corporations to fund and potentially fold new ventures into their core business. (TechCrunch)

Stability AI, creating AI products for music, gaming, and entertainment businesses, raised $76 million in a Series B round with participation from AMD Ventures, Pacific Alliance Ventures, Electronic Arts, Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group. (the Los Angeles Times)

Profound, which helps brands market through AI chatbots, raised $180 million in Series D funding co-led by Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins. (Bloomberg)

Sponsored By Awesome CX

Protect what makes you great. JAANUU started with a simple idea: Rethink medical apparel. Innovation and brand DNA made it stand out. Scale-Up Stories unpacks the real-world lessons, frameworks, and proven strategies from leaders who’ve navigated scaling successful companies themselves. Hear from CEO Mike Alexander on how JAANU is taking its original vision into the next stage of growth without losing its core differentiator.

Stat: $27 million. That’s how much entrepreneur Ilit Raz raised for AI recruiting platform Joonko Diversity after inflating revenue figures and misrepresenting customer data. Raz pleaded guilty to securities fraud this month and faces up to 20 years in prison. (Inc.)

Quote: “My father used to run sales meetings in my living room [when I was] growing up. He would have five or six guys sitting around our living room, and I would just sit in the corner and listen. And I always thought, ‘Man, this is what I want to do.’”—Granite Telecommunications co-founder and CEO Rob Hale, who was recently recognized for donating $110.9 million to charity in 2025 (Boston Business Journal)

Read: A review of The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There, the new book that offers a history of the pass-through tax structure and how it supplied “bakers of hamburger buns, distributors of toilet paper, a tanning-bed mogul” with the American Dream. (The New Yorker)

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