A conversation with Alexandria Bohn, co-founder of Prodi. On customer discovery, building with your partner, and the courage to start over.

It started with a simple problem.

Alexandria was working in corporate. Smart newsletters sat in her inbox. She wanted to read them. But not on a screen. Not after a long day.

She wanted to listen.

So she and her co-founder Patricio Castillo started digging. First, a tool that scraped the web based on interests and turned information into audio. It went nowhere. Then they tried something similar with learning and development teams within companies. Also nothing. The pain just wasn't there.

Then someone said: "What about internal communications?"

They started talking to people. And they found it fast.

Internal comms teams write a lot. Newsletters. Intranet posts. Email updates. Content that took hours to make and that almost nobody read. But when that same content became a podcast? Engagement goes up. The problem was that making podcasts was slow and expensive.

Nobody had solved it. Until Prodi.

The idea was simple.

Take all that written content. Turn it into a branded audio podcast. Two AI hosts. A real dialogue. Tailored to the company's tone of voice.

Employees can listen on their commute. During lunch. Between meetings.

The comms team still writes. Prodi did the rest.

One client, Roularta Media Group, turned their quarterly internal magazine into a weekly podcast called Happie In Je Oren. 

Here's the part that surprises people.

They sold their first client before they had a product. Before they'd built anything. Before they'd even incorporated.

"We sold to our first customer without a product or a company. We just had a vision and knew we could make it work."

They’ve read business books and know the trap: spend months building, then find out nobody wants it. So they flipped it. Sell first. Build second.

The first Yes came. They rushed to incorporate. Then they figured out how to deliver.

That first podcast took 15 hours to make. A mess of different tools. Lots of manual work.

But it worked. And it proved the most important thing: the pain was real. 

Getting that first conversation was always the hardest part. They relied on warm referrals. Built custom demos up front so clients could hear exactly what their company would sound like. Always started with a three-month paid pilot.

Sales cycles ran two to nine months. Some clients ran their own launch campaigns. Others made stickers. One put it in the onboarding pack for new hires.

In six months: zero to seven corporate clients. Delaware. Roularta. Mediahuis.

By early 2024, Prodi had won the Future 5 at Supernova. Named one of the five most promising startups in Belgium.

Alexandria and Patricio pitched on stage. They crushed it.

Then a jury member pushed back. He didn't get it. He questioned the value.

Before she could even answer, another jury member grabbed the mic.

It was a client. From Delaware. Someone she didn't know was in the room. And he spent the next minute explaining to the whole audience exactly how much Prodi had changed things for his team.

"Patricio and I got tears in our eyes standing on that stage. You work so much. You push your limits. You question yourself. And then someone gives you that validation… I'm never going to forget it."

Don't forget those moments. They're the fuel.

By last summer, Prodi was doing okay. Winning awards. On national TV. Working with big Belgian brands. From the outside, it looked like a win.

But Alexandria and Patricio were doing the math.

Budget cuts were hitting hard. And internal comms? It was always the first to go because it's nearly impossible to show a clear ROI. That made Prodi a nice-to-have. Not a must-have.

"We asked ourselves: if we were investors, would we put money into this company right now? The answer was no."

In November, they decided to stop.

"If the company isn't working, it's easy to stop. But if you're doing okay, that's when it's hard."

The risk isn't always failure. Sometimes it's just enough momentum to avoid the hard question.

The moment they stopped, the questions came.

Doesn't it feel like failure? Don't you feel bad?

That was mostly from early-stage founders. People who hadn't been through it yet.

But when Alexandria and Patricio talked to founders who'd already exited? The reaction was totally different.

"Oh, amazing. What are you looking into next?"

That contrast taught her something. The people around you shape how you read your own story. At one point she almost stopped going to the co-working space. 

She had to cut that out.

Surround yourself with people at the stage you want to reach and reduce the noise.

So they went back to basics. Same method as Prodi. Start with pain. Not ideas.

They ran 150 interviews in two months. Across sectors. Looking for friction that showed up again and again.

Although they are building in stealth mode and did not share many details, their focus has fully shifted to the finance space. 

“The space is moving fast. The opportunity is real.”

Patricio is Alexandria's co-founder. He's also her partner.

She's honest about both sides.

The upside: trust from day one. Aligned ambition. A shared view of how they want to spend this chapter of their lives and working hard on something that matters.

Some founders deal with a partner who resents the late nights. The weekends. The constant pull. For Alexandria, it's flipped. When Patricio works late, she doesn't mind.

"Good", but in a positive way. They're rooting for each other.

The downside: separation. When the same person is your co-founder and the person you go home to, the lines blur fast.

That's why the co-working space matters. Different places. Different modes. Different context.

They've set clear rules. Each person owns their area. If you own a decision, you own the outcome. For disagreements, the rule is simple: come with facts.

There was a hard moment for Alexandria, when clients were coming in, things were moving, and personal life was under pressure at the exact same time.

Both edges at once.

In those moments, she goes back to something her dad always said.

"If it was easy, everyone else would be doing it."

For her, it's a personal mantra. 

“In those really difficult moments when many would quit, this quote is what helps me push through. It’s about personal resilience, that pushing through the hard part is exactly where you make a difference and grow.”

That mindset shows up in everything Alexandria does, and when something is working but not really working, she dares to ask the hard question.

Question:  What's your next adventure? 

Alexandria’s answer: “My next adventure. is this next startup that we're building. We’re figuring out if we want to bootstrap it or if we want to get investment first, and what is the exact problem we want to start building a solution for.”

You can find her on LinkedIn!

🐶 😅