Albert Lie
Co‑founder & CTO at Forward Labs — AI for freight
albertleeadrian
Seoul, South Korea
San Francisco, California
Toronto, Ontario
Joined December 2024
Network
16.9K connectionsALRSTP
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Network
16.9K connectionsSummary
Builder of applied AI for freight: Albert is focused on shipping AI systems that solve real-world logistics problems — building agents and multimodal models to automate freight sales and operations. He emphasizes eval-driven development to move models from demo to production. super+2
Experienced hypergrowth engineering leader in Southeast Asia fintech: He served as a founding engineer and engineering lead at Xendit (helping scale from no product to a YC-backed unicorn) and was a young VP at Spenmo, indicating deep experience in building reliable payments/finance infrastructure and scaling engineering teams. super+2
Civic‑tech & impact background: Early in his career he co-founded a civic-technology NGO (Code for Bdg) and later contributed to government-facing and nonprofit projects (U.S. Digital Response), showing a pattern of mission-driven engineering and community engagement. super
Active writer, speaker, and community mentor: Maintains a Substack and HackerNoon presence, speaks at industry events (Comet/Convergence) and participates in fellowships/communities (South Park Commons), demonstrating strengths in communicating technical ideas and mentoring other builders. substack+2
Work
Education
Projects
Writing
HackerNoon: Meet the HackerNoon Top Writers – Writing Through the Noise of AI with Albert Lie
April 18, 2025Interview / profile about writing, building, and the author's journey from civic tech and hypergrowth startups into AI and freight.
Escaping AI Demo Hell: Why Eval‑Driven Development Is Your Path to Production
January 1, 2025Explains why evaluation-driven development (structured model evaluation and monitoring) is necessary to move AI from demo to production, with practical guidance from experience shipping AI in freight/logistics.
Why I “left” San Francisco
January 1, 2024Personal essay on career, geography, and choices about where and how to build startups and life; published on the author's Substack.
Why Freight Tech?
Long-form writing on the opportunities and frictions in freight/logistics that motivated building AI for the sector.
Hobbies
Hiking, museum-surfing, remixing music, making food and AI art; writes long-form essays on Substack. super+1
Notes
May 15, 2026
JMJai Mansukhanisaid
ALAlbert L.
has made a significant, positive difference in technical execution and team culture at an enterprise B2B startup they've observed.Aug 11, 2025