She Quit Her Oxford PhD to Build an AI Company Tackling Bias in Hiring | Riham Satti
Riham Satti was on track for a life in academia — Oxford PhD, research papers, professorship.
Then she met her co-founder, built an app to get him a job at Microsoft, and accidentally uncovered a billion-dollar problem: human bias in recruitment.
Today, she’s the CEO and co-founder of MeVitae, an AI platform using neuroscience and data to make hiring fairer and faster.
In this episode, we go deep into what it really takes to go from academia to entrepreneurship — without the safety net of VC money or a Silicon Valley network.
Riham’s story is one of grit, grants, and growth — building a mission-driven business the long, hard, but sustainable way.
💬 Watch this episode if you want to learn:
- How to turn research into a real business
- The neuroscience of bias and decision-making
- When to expand to the US (and how to know if you’re ready)
- Why compassion is a founder’s superpower
- How to stay in “startup mode” after 10+ years of building
🎧 CHAPTERS
00:00 – Intro: From Oxford to Entrepreneurship
02:00 – Falling in love with STEM and academia
05:30 – Building an app to hack into Microsoft
08:00 – The first 50k downloads that changed everything
10:30 – Discovering bias in hiring and founding MeVitae
13:00 – Bootstrapping with grants (no VC, no network)
16:20 – Early lessons in startup survival
18:40 – How bias actually works in the human brain
22:00 – The first enterprise client (and the chaos that followed)
25:00 – Building the MeVitae team and culture
29:00 – Expanding to the US — when and why
33:00 – Balancing perfectionism with speed
37:00 – The “10-year overnight success”
42:00 – Compassion, leadership, and building a real company
46:00 – What’s next for Riham and MeVitae
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
