Thomas Swalla

CEO, GraphPad

Thomas is currently the CEO of GraphPad. He previously served as President of StudyMode, where he helped build the world’s largest study group by enabling a community of students to share and collaborate around high quality study materials. Tom was previously the COO of LA-based Savings.com. Prior to Savings.com, he was with Lagovent Ventures in Los Angeles, where he evaluated consumer internet businesses as an EIR. Prior to Lagovent Ventures, Swalla was the President at Knowledge Adventure, the leading venture-backed developer and publisher of children’s gaming content, where he was responsible for launching and managing all online business initiatives for the company. He was also the VP of Business Development and Strategy for RazorGator.

Articles by Thomas Swalla

The Founder’s Mental Health Playbook: What I Learned After Nearly Burning Out

A hard-won guide to staying mentally healthy while building a startup I founded Stitcher, the podcast platform, in 2007 and ran it for seven years until we sold in 2014....

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) for Early Stage Companies

In our latest session from the Mucker Growth Series featuring Ethan Smith from Graphite, we explored AEO, a significant new approach for optimizing visibility in AI-driven search, particularly relevant as...

Startup Guide to AI Visibility: Be the Brand ChatGPT Recommends

Introduction Today, users aren’t just searching on Google. They’re asking ChatGPT, Claude, Google’s Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI systems for advice. AI visibility is the new frontier of brand awareness....

Practical Uses of AI & Automation for Startup Operations

In a recent Mucker Growth Series session, we invited Rock Vitale, Founder & CEO of Easie, to share how he’s helped early-stage teams move from manual, fragmented workflows to streamlined,...

2025 New York Tech Week Recap Of Mucker Sessions

Last week during New York Tech Week 2025, we joined more than 1,000 events hosted by founders, investors, and VCs. This post is a full Mucker recap of the three...

How to Build a Customer Support Function for Startups Using AI Tools with Alex Velinov

Delivering high-quality customer support can be one of the most resource-draining parts of a startup. The good news: we’re at a turning point where founders can use AI tools to...