Navigating Crises in the AI Era with Alok Aggarwal, CEO of Scry AI

When you’re building a fast-scaling tech company, crises are inevitable. But not all crises are created equal.

In this episode of Wisdom From Wizards, I sat down with Alok Aggarwal, CEO of Scry AI, to ask a deceptively simple question:
Would you rather face a financial crisis or a PR crisis?

Alok’s answer might surprise you — but his reasoning offers a crucial reminder for tech CEOs operating in today’s AI-saturated market.

“If they’re of the same level, I’d rather manage a financial crisis than a PR crisis,” Alok says.
Why? Because while capital can be rebuilt, trust — once broken — can be much harder to repair.

Alok draws from decades of experience in AI, tracing hype cycles back to the 1960s, 1980s, and now, the current LLM boom. He highlights a core risk many founders overlook: promising more than your tech can deliver.

In his words, “There’s a fair amount of things being sold as AI that can’t actually be done yet.” In this kind of environment, overstated marketing or premature branding can spark a PR backlash that’s much harder to contain than a spreadsheet full of red ink.

This conversation is part of Wisdom From Wizards, brought to you by Caribou Strategic, helping tech scaleups stand out and succeed.

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