Trisha Kothari

I co-founded Unit21 in 2018. We build software that banks and fintechs use to fight fraud and money laundering. I ran it as CEO for 7+ years and now serve as Chairman. Before that, I was one of the first engineers at Affirm. I studied computer science at Penn.

These days I'm thinking about what to build next. I'm particularly interested in technologies that change what ordinary people can do.

Businesses that run themselves. Could one person build a $1M, $10M, or even $100M ARR company while spending just fifteen minutes a day running it? Not by hiring hundreds of people. By building a company that largely runs itself.

How children learn. In Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, a little girl learns from a book that adapts to her. I keep thinking about that. An AI tutor teaching the same old curriculum seems like a missed opportunity. What would education look like if we designed it around curiosity and independent thought rather than standardized instruction?

Industrialization. I think it was a grave mistake to let China accumulate so much of the world's manufacturing capability. It took decades to build, and we can't reverse it by announcing a few factories. I'm interested in what it would actually take to rebuild that capacity.

Flying cars. Billions of dollars and more than a decade of development, yet nobody is commuting in a flying car. We have aircraft that can take off and land vertically. Getting them certified to carry passengers routinely over crowded cities is another matter. What would it actually take?

Ambient memory. With AI, we'll be able to search our memories in a way we couldn't before. What happens when memory stops being something fuzzy and fallible and becomes something we can retrieve and verify? What does that do to law, discrimination, trust, and our relationships?

Scams. I've spent years studying how scams work. Grandparent scams, romance scams, bank impersonation. We've come a long way from Nigerian princes. AI could make every scam deeply personal, completely believable, and almost free to produce. What happens to trust when anyone can convincingly impersonate anyone?

Religion. I used to think religion was a net negative for society. I've started to wonder whether religion is one of the main reasons we managed to build civilizations without killing each other. And if religion disappears, what takes its place?

Gender norms. In Western societies, men and women have increasingly similar access to education and opportunity, yet their lives often diverge in remarkably predictable ways. I'm especially interested in how seemingly small choices made early on in life compound over decades.

Meditation. I did a ten-day silent Vipassana retreat before starting my first company. It was one of the most profound experiences of my life. I came away with what I still think is the most valuable lesson I've learned: This too shall pass.