Alex Mashrabov - Founder of Higgsfield AI and ex-Head of Generative AI at Snap

Last week we had the pleasure to host Alex Mashrabov — founder of Higgsfield AI, ex-Head of Generative AI at Snap — for an Icons dinner.

A few things I will be carrying with me from the dinner:

1/ On knowing when you’re wrong. Higgsfield burned $10M of a $16M seed on consumer before Alex admitted AI doesn’t fix consumer retention. The courage to change course when you’ve already spent the money is rare. He did it.

2/ On picking your hero. Instead of chasing OpenAI, he studied Canva — 20M paying users, $4B ARR, built quietly out of Australia. That choice of role model says a lot. Not every great company looks like the ones on the magazine covers.

3/ On staying close to the work. Alex still knows which model releases shipped this week and what his customers are paying. When the company has grown so fast, you cannot step away. He isn’t. That proximity is the company.

4/ On what actually wins. Six releases a week. Cash-flow breakeven. No marketing budget. “We had to believe the best product wins.” Not the biggest raise. The best product.

5/ On speed as a tool. The way Alex described it, speed wasn’t the strategy. It was the byproduct of a small, deeply aligned team that knew exactly what it was building and why. Velocity as a function of clarity, not chaos.

What stayed with me wasn’t a tactic. It was Alex himself. The clarity he brought to every question, about the wins, the missteps, the parts of the journey most founders dress up, was the most inspiring thing in the room.

Thank you, Alex. And thank you to everyone who came.

A separate thank you to Alma for sponsoring the dinner and to the Central Asian Innovation Hub for providing us the space to make this happen.