About Alex Smith
I run spktr on my own, so the person who scopes your problem is the person who builds it, and the person you call when it breaks. For the last decade I’ve built software and led product, most of that in China, and I moved back to Phoenixville in 2026.
What I do now
I started spktr in 2026 to do applied AI for owner-operated companies, the kind with real operational pain and no internal engineering team. I find the repetitive work worth automating, build a small version that has to earn its place, then scale the part that works.
So far I’ve built production tooling that removed a manual design step, demand forecasting off an ERP, warehouse process automation, site and analytics remediation, and a data pipeline that scores funding prospects from public filings. I stay deliberately vague about who. Whether to talk about the work is the client’s call.
I live in Phoenixville with my dog, Heizi, and work across Chester, Montgomery, Bucks, and Delaware counties, plus Philadelphia and the Main Line. If you’re nearby, I’m happy to meet in person.
Before this
I spent twelve years in China. Most recently I was a senior product manager at Klarna, where I owned image and visual search for about two years and shipped Product Image Search, Scan to Pay, and Scan to Add Card to more than 4 million people a day. I ran two China-based squads inside a discovery-shopping initiative of more than 300 people, and kept the China roadmap lined up with the European one.
Before Klarna I ran Le Wagon’s China business. I opened the Shenzhen campus from nothing to profitability in three months, then took over the whole China business: three campuses, 12 full-time staff, 64 part-time instructors, 393 students. I taught 120 hours of it myself. Teaching a non-technical adult to build software is the same work as getting a team to actually adopt an AI tool, and adoption is where most of these projects fail.
Earlier I ran design sprints at Wiredcraft for companies including Nike, Burberry, Hilton, IKEA, and Walmart, and shipped a WeChat Mini Program as product lead and frontend developer. I work in English and Mandarin.
Klarna
Senior Product Manager
2023–2026 · Shanghai and Stockholm
Le Wagon
China General Manager
2019–2023 · Shanghai and Shenzhen
Wiredcraft
Solutions Specialist
2017–2018 · Shanghai
Around Phoenixville
I founded and run Greater Philly AI, the region’s AI meetup, out of a Phoenixville venue. A speaker series with the calendar booked out, and I spoke at the debut about building a personal agent. I also built Shows Up, a volunteer-matching app that connects Phoenixville residents to the organizations that need help, and Made in Chester County, an independent showcase of 62 county companies across aeronautics, tech, life sciences, and manufacturing.
None of that is billable. I build things for this area because I moved back to it on purpose, after twelve years away, and I’d like it to have a real AI community.