Gloo HQ, Palo Alto
5:30pm
$25
Gloo Conversations are candid and unscripted events designed for founders, operators, and builders in the Palo Alto area who are looking for an honest inputs at the intersection of faith, technology, and applied AI.
In this session, we are moving past the hype to address the tension between productivity and human flourishing. As the barrier to building collapses and Agentic AI transforms the workforce, we have to ask the hard questions: Who truly benefits from these systems, and who gets left behind? Does this technology actually accelerate human flourishing—thriving across dimensions like character, relationships, and purpose—or does it deepen existing structural gaps?
This one-hour, interactive conversation is a space to grapple with the responsibilities we carry as builders and the impact our work has on the communities we serve.
Featured Guests
Ishmael Samuel
CTO and Co-founder of Paragon
Michael Broughton
Founder & CEO of GrowthSync
Michael Broughton is the Founder & CEO of GrowthSync, a social listening platform that helps brands turn online conversations into commerce. Before GrowthSync, he founded Altro, which broke the rules of credit as the first congressionally approved trade line to help people build credit through their everyday subscriptions, pioneering trade lines under $250. He sold the venture in 2024.
An active angel investor, Michael is especially excited about the application layer of AI and what it means for the future of tech and work. His journey has been featured by Forbes, TechCrunch, and more.
Learn more: michaelbroughton.com
Ishmael Samuel is the CTO and co-founder of Paragon, the integration infrastructure for AI and SaaS companies. Founded in 2019, Paragon has raised over $40M in funding and powers integrations for hundreds of leading software companies around the world including Zendesk, Postman, and Pipedrive.
Ishmael has over a decade of experience building software products and technical teams. Prior to Paragon, he founded CTRL LA, a software development agency that built web and mobile products for companies including Universal Studios and Uber.
Alongside building Paragon, Ishmael is deeply involved in supporting early-stage founders through mentorship, volunteering, and work with organizations that help entrepreneurs build and scale their companies.
