E2E: From Entry Level to Executive
Aug 5, 2026 · 28 min · 9 segments
Alex Pantich, co-founder and COO of Upshift, shares how an unconventional career path led him from teaching English overseas and launching a news publication to building one of the country's…
So Upshift focuses on lower skilled work in the hospitality and light industrial warehouse sectors.
So on the hospitality side, I think hotels, convention centers, corporate dining, long term care, those types of places.
And on the industrial and hospitality side, very light manufacturing like assembly work and then fulfillment work.
So stuff that people can usually learn how to do in under a week, with some exceptions, you know, on the hospitality side, skill-wise level, up to line cooks.
On the industrial side, we will get up to some types of tools that require up to two weeks of training.
But we generally don't do things that are more complex than that unless it's direct hire.
So tell us a little bit, what's a leadership lesson? You started as a young founder.
I was around founders of startups and tech companies because we raised venture money.
Our biggest investors, Indeed.com's parent company, Recruit Holdings, their venture arm.
And a lot of them were really just focused on showing and talking rather than doing things.
And so that was something we've always just been focused on is actually doing things, following through on them rather than just doing press releases and talking about what we're going to
do.
And I know that you've like from the peer group side that you're in with ASA, you're in a group with staffing peers.
And like you've said, you're usually in with startup peers instead, getting totally different leadership lessons and business guidance from them, which is you get both sides of insight now from your peer groups.
So Upshift focuses on lower skilled work in the hospitality and light industrial warehouse sectors.
So on the hospitality side, I think hotels, convention centers, corporate dining, long term care, those types of places.
And on the industrial and hospitality side, very light manufacturing like assembly work and then fulfillment work.
So stuff that people can usually learn how to do in under a week, with some exceptions, you know, on the hospitality side, skill-wise level, up to line cooks.
On the industrial side, we will get up to some types of tools that require up to two weeks of training.
But we generally don't do things that are more complex than that unless it's direct hire.
So tell us a little bit, what's a leadership lesson? You started as a young founder.
I was around founders of startups and tech companies because we raised venture money.
Our biggest investors, Indeed.com's parent company, Recruit Holdings, their venture arm.
And a lot of them were really just focused on showing and talking rather than doing things.
And so that was something we've always just been focused on is actually doing things, following through on them rather than just doing press releases and talking about what we're going to
do.
And I know that you've like from the peer group side that you're in with ASA, you're in a group with staffing peers.
And like you've said, you're usually in with startup peers instead, getting totally different leadership lessons and business guidance from them, which is you get both sides of insight now from your peer groups.
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