April 29, 2025
Oversharing, Privacy, and the Future of Messaging w/ Tessa Brown, CEO of Germ Network
We don’t need more ways to connect — we need better ways to protect what we share.
Podcast
Tessa Brown, Co-Founder and CEO of Germ Network, joins the show to talk about,
- Tessa's journey from Stanford writing professor to startup founder, the dangers of social platforms designed to maximize exposure, and why privacy should be the default, not the exception.
- How Germ lets users create multiple, compartmentalized identities
- The flaws of phone number–based messaging and the case for link-based connection, and her philosophy on building with integrity in a surveillance-based tech world
- Tessa’s experience fundraising from K5 Global and Mozilla Ventures