"When You've Been Through a Lot of Different Challenges in Your Life, You Build a Muscle" -- Ardie Sameti, Co-Founder and CEO of Scala
Ardie Sameti Co-Founder and CEO, Scala
Ardie Sameti
Co-Founder and CEO, Scala
Ardie Sameti is the co-founder and CEO of Scala, a Bellevue-based AI startup that raised $8.5 million in seed funding from Madrona and FUSE in February 2026. Scala is building the first operational intelligence platform designed for modern contact centers, where human agents and AI work side by side. Ardie came to the United States as a refugee from Iran at age 2, grew up in Bellevue, dropped out of college to run restaurants including owning a Romeo's Pizza and Pasta franchise in Factoria at age 18, and spent nearly a decade at Accolade leading AI and platform initiatives supporting over 15 million member lives. Scala's co-founder and executive chair is Rajeev Singh, who previously co-founded Concur Technologies, led Accolade through its IPO, and currently serves as CEO of Smartsheet. Ardie lives in Kirkland with his wife Ali and their three young children.
$8.5M
Seed funding raised from Madrona and FUSE
15M+
Member lives supported at Accolade before founding Scala
2
Age when Ardie arrived in the US as a refugee
18
Age when Ardie became GM of three restaurant locations
| Time | Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 | Rapid fire -- LL Cool J at the Gorge, Nas over Biggie, the imposter syndrome that never left, and the mentor Ardie would name before anyone else |
| 07:00 | Born in Iran, arrived as a refugee -- A mother in her mid-20s with no English, a 2-year-old, and a sponsored family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota who took them in and whose names Ardie is still trying to find |
| 14:00 | Growing up in Bellevue on Section 8 -- A father who was incarcerated, a mother who worked around the clock, and how a kid raised in survival mode translates that into grit and gratitude |
| 19:00 | Dropping out and running restaurants -- From accounting for a Romeo's Pizza franchise to becoming GM of three locations at 18, then buying one, then consulting for Osteria La Spiga and Milagro Cantina |
| 26:00 | The Old Bellevue Merchants Association and Raj Singh -- How Ardie introduced himself to a Concur legend at a city merchants meeting, bugged him relentlessly, and eventually got a call to come join Accolade |
| 32:00 | Nine years at Accolade -- Learning product and tech from scratch as a restaurant operator, scaling from hundreds of thousands to 15 million lives, and heading up AI and platform initiatives |
| 38:00 | Founding Scala -- $8.5 million from Madrona and FUSE, a team of 15, and why the platform is a love letter to operators running contact centers, not a product built by people who have never been on their side of the table |
| 42:00 | Parenting with Ali and teaching grit deliberately -- How two people with very different childhoods try to manufacture the kind of resilience that usually only comes from real difficulty |
| 45:00 | What fuels Ardie -- His kids 100%, making them proud, and practicing what he preaches about hard work and being uncomfortable by doing it in public where they can see |
From Esfahan to Sioux Falls to Bellevue, and the Mother Who Made It Happen
Ardie Sameti was born in Esfahan, Iran, a city he describes as one of the most ancient and beautiful in the world, in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. His mother was in her mid-20s when she made the decision to leave. Post-revolution Iran had changed completely, and she wanted a different future for herself and her son. With no money, no English, and a 2-year-old in her arms, she made her way through refugee camps in Vienna, Ankara, and Geneva, and arrived in the United States in the late 1980s, sponsored by a family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota whose names Ardie still does not know and is still trying to find.
The family took them in. They lived in a basement for two or three years. His mother then heard of a Persian community in Seattle and moved to the Pacific Northwest, where she and Ardie cycled through Lynnwood, the Rainier area, and eventually Bellevue, navigating Section 8 housing and welfare while she worked constantly. His father came later, did not do well in the US, and was incarcerated. Ardie grew up largely with his mother as the only stable adult in his life. He does not tell this story with self-pity. He tells it the way someone does who has spent years translating hardship into motivation and has arrived at something that looks like genuine, unconflicted gratitude.
"I don't see my journey as like, oh my God, I'm -- I feel bad for myself. I feel really lucky and I feel a deep, deep sense of gratitude."
He grew up in Bellevue, attended elementary school, middle school, and high school there, and met Ali, now his wife, their senior year of high school. They dated into their freshman year of college, broke up, lived their separate lives for a stretch, and found their way back to each other. She went to WSU. He did a couple of semesters at Bellevue Community College, then dropped out to help his mother. He does not frame this as a sacrifice. He frames it as the beginning of his real education.
Running Restaurants at 18, and What Comes After You Hit the Ceiling
Ardie's path into business started through a man he called his uncle, who was not a blood relative but who owned several Romeo's Pizza and Pasta franchise locations across Washington. The uncle needed someone he trusted to handle accounting and back-office work. Ardie took the job. He fell in love with the P&L almost immediately: the margins, the food costs, the labor ratios, the levers you could pull to move revenue. Within a year and a half, the uncle made him general manager of all three locations. Ardie was 18 years old and could not legally drink at the bar he was managing.
He responded by doing what he has always done in rooms where he has no formal authority: he came in with humility, learned every function from dishwasher to bartender, and made himself genuinely useful to the people around him. A location came up for sale in Factoria in Bellevue. He took out a loan and bought it. He ran it for years at 100 hours a week. He then transitioned into restaurant consulting, helping operators scale and eventually becoming director of operations for Osteria La Spiga, an authentic Italian restaurant in Seattle, and then Milagro Cantina, which won best new restaurant when it opened. He hit a ceiling. He watched his wife come home from teaching fulfilled in a way he was not. They talked about having a family. He decided to look for something different.
"I sat in a room with Harvard Business grads and they're pretending to be the CEO of Ben and Jerry's. In the back of my head, I'm like, this isn't how business works at all."
The transition happened because of one meeting at the Old Bellevue Merchants Association, a city board representing businesses on Main Street in downtown Bellevue. Ardie was attending on behalf of the 520 Bar and Grill, where he was general manager. A presenter came in to announce that Concur Technologies was moving from Redmond to downtown Bellevue. The presenter was Rajeev Singh, co-founder of Concur. Ardie describes watching him speak and thinking he had never seen anything like it. He beelined to Singh afterward, introduced himself, got his number, and started calling. He kept calling. Eventually Singh called back, and eventually Ardie had a seat at Accolade.
Nine Years at Accolade, and the Gap That Became Scala
Rajeev Singh told Ardie directly: do the most uncomfortable roles in this business. Learn product and technology. Learn sales and marketing. Be well-rounded. Ardie took that literally. He had no formal technology background. He had run restaurants. He sat alongside clinicians and care advocates in Accolade's contact center, mapped every workflow from first principles, and started writing requirements for engineering teams. He worked with people he describes, consistently, as much smarter than himself. He contributed by working hard, asking good questions, and applying the operational instincts he had built running pizza restaurants to a healthcare engagement center supporting millions of member lives.
By the time he left, Accolade had grown from a few hundred thousand lives to more than 15 million, had gone through an IPO, and had expanded into virtual primary care. Ardie had headed up AI and platform initiatives. He had also identified the gap that Scala was built to close: operators running large contact centers had data everywhere and insight nowhere. The tools built for them described problems but did not diagnose them. They could tell you what happened but not why, and they gave you no clear path to action. Ardie and Singh founded Scala in July 2025, came out of stealth in February 2026 with $8.5 million from Madrona and FUSE, and have built a team of about 15 people, almost entirely composed of people Ardie already trusted from his prior life.
"This is me basically, us building something because we understand the gravity of running a contact center at scale. They're not the issue, it's the systems that are broken."
He describes the Scala platform as a love letter to operators. The product includes agentic process automation, conversational AI, an AI coworker product called Pulse Assist that functions as an ops chief of staff, and a performance intelligence module that surfaces the health of the business in real time. The target customers are healthcare, travel, and financial services, with healthcare as the natural starting point given the team's background. Ardie is emphatic that the platform is not flashy and is not supposed to be. Operators are drowning in complexity. The UI should be seamless. The technology under the hood should be invisible. AI done right, he says, should feel like less is more.
5 Key Takeaways
🫶
Gratitude is not a personality trait -- it is built through difficulty
Ardie arrived in the US at age 2 with a mother who had no money and no English. He is direct that this history is not a wound; it is a source. He feels genuinely lucky, and attributes that capacity for gratitude specifically to having experienced genuine scarcity.
🍕
The restaurant industry teaches business faster than almost anything else
Running a franchise location in Factoria at 18 with 100-hour weeks gave Ardie a working understanding of margins, labor, process, and people management that he says outpaced the Harvard Business School case study methodology he later observed from the inside.
📬
The cold introduction to the right person is worth years of conventional career advancement
Ardie introduced himself to Rajeev Singh at a city merchants board meeting, got his number, and kept calling until Singh called back. That one introduction led to Accolade, which led to Scala. He names Singh as the person who has believed in him longest and most consistently.
🧠
Build the product you wished you had when you were the customer
Scala was built because Ardie had spent nine years on the operator side of contact center technology and knew exactly what was broken. The platform is designed for people running the kind of operations he used to run, not for people who have read about them.
👨👩👧👦
Practice what you preach where your kids can see you do it
Ardie says one reason he took on the risk of a startup was to show his children what it looks like to struggle and try to build something from scratch. He preaches hard work and discomfort. He wants them to watch him do both.
Ardie Sameti Scala Rajeev Singh Accolade Madrona FUSE What Fuels You Shauna Swerland Fuel Talent AI Startup Contact Center Operational Intelligence Iranian American Immigrant Founder Refugee Entrepreneur Bellevue Startup Pacific Northwest Concur Technologies Enterprise AI Customer Experience Resilience Grit
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ardie Sameti and what is Scala?
Ardie Sameti is the co-founder and CEO of Scala, a Bellevue-based AI startup that emerged from stealth in February 2026 with $8.5 million in seed funding from Madrona and FUSE. Scala is building the first operational intelligence platform designed specifically for modern contact centers, where human agents and AI work side by side. The company was co-founded with Rajeev Singh, who co-founded Concur Technologies, led Accolade through its IPO, and currently serves as CEO of Smartsheet. Before founding Scala, Ardie spent nearly a decade at Accolade leading AI and platform initiatives that supported over 15 million member lives.
What is Ardie Sameti's background before founding Scala?
Ardie arrived in the United States as a refugee from Iran at age 2, grew up in Bellevue on Section 8 housing, and dropped out of college to help support his mother. He became the GM of three Romeo's Pizza and Pasta franchise locations at 18, bought one of the locations himself, and eventually ran restaurant consulting for fine dining establishments in Seattle including Osteria La Spiga and Milagro Cantina. He transitioned into technology after introducing himself to Rajeev Singh at a Bellevue merchants board meeting and ultimately joined Singh at Accolade, where he spent nearly a decade before co-founding Scala.
What problem does Scala solve for contact centers?
Ardie Sameti explained on What Fuels You that contact center operators have data spread across many disconnected systems, but the tools available to them describe what happened without diagnosing why or providing a clear path to action. Scala is building an operational intelligence platform that unifies that data, surfaces actionable insights, and allows operators to manage performance, cost, and customer experience outcomes in real time. The platform includes agentic process automation, a conversational AI coworker called Pulse Assist, and a performance intelligence module designed specifically for customer experience leaders in healthcare, travel, and financial services.
How did Ardie Sameti meet Rajeev Singh?
Ardie was serving on the Old Bellevue Merchants Association as general manager of the 520 Bar and Grill when Rajeev Singh presented at a board meeting to announce that Concur Technologies was moving to downtown Bellevue. Ardie was struck by how Singh spoke and introduced himself immediately afterward. He got Singh's contact information, started reaching out consistently, and eventually was invited to join Singh and Mike Hilton at Accolade, which became a nine-year chapter of Ardie's career. Singh is now co-founder and executive chair of Scala.
What does Ardie Sameti say about raising resilient children?
On What Fuels You, Ardie described the challenge he and his wife Ali face in raising three young children in circumstances very different from his own upbringing. He said they talk about it every day: they want their kids to fail, to be uncomfortable, and to build grit, but they struggle with how to create real difficulty for children who have never genuinely lacked anything. His answer is to lead by example, taking on the risk and discomfort of building a startup specifically so his children can watch him struggle to build something from scratch.
Ardie Sameti Co-Founder and CEO, Scala
Ardie Sameti
Co-Founder and CEO, Scala
Ardie Sameti is the co-founder and CEO of Scala, a Bellevue-based AI startup that raised $8.5 million in seed funding from Madrona and FUSE in February 2026. Scala is building the first operational intelligence platform designed for modern contact centers, where human agents and AI work side by side. Ardie came to the United States as a refugee from Iran at age 2, grew up in Bellevue, dropped out of college to run restaurants including owning a Romeo's Pizza and Pasta franchise in Factoria at age 18, and spent nearly a decade at Accolade leading AI and platform initiatives supporting over 15 million member lives. Scala's co-founder and executive chair is Rajeev Singh, who previously co-founded Concur Technologies, led Accolade through its IPO, and currently serves as CEO of Smartsheet. Ardie lives in Kirkland with his wife Ali and their three young children.
$8.5M
Seed funding raised from Madrona and FUSE
15M+
Member lives supported at Accolade before founding Scala
2
Age when Ardie arrived in the US as a refugee
18
Age when Ardie became GM of three restaurant locations
| Time | Topic |
|---|---|
| 00:00 | Rapid fire -- LL Cool J at the Gorge, Nas over Biggie, the imposter syndrome that never left, and the mentor Ardie would name before anyone else |
| 07:00 | Born in Iran, arrived as a refugee -- A mother in her mid-20s with no English, a 2-year-old, and a sponsored family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota who took them in and whose names Ardie is still trying to find |
| 14:00 | Growing up in Bellevue on Section 8 -- A father who was incarcerated, a mother who worked around the clock, and how a kid raised in survival mode translates that into grit and gratitude |
| 19:00 | Dropping out and running restaurants -- From accounting for a Romeo's Pizza franchise to becoming GM of three locations at 18, then buying one, then consulting for Osteria La Spiga and Milagro Cantina |
| 26:00 | The Old Bellevue Merchants Association and Raj Singh -- How Ardie introduced himself to a Concur legend at a city merchants meeting, bugged him relentlessly, and eventually got a call to come join Accolade |
| 32:00 | Nine years at Accolade -- Learning product and tech from scratch as a restaurant operator, scaling from hundreds of thousands to 15 million lives, and heading up AI and platform initiatives |
| 38:00 | Founding Scala -- $8.5 million from Madrona and FUSE, a team of 15, and why the platform is a love letter to operators running contact centers, not a product built by people who have never been on their side of the table |
| 42:00 | Parenting with Ali and teaching grit deliberately -- How two people with very different childhoods try to manufacture the kind of resilience that usually only comes from real difficulty |
| 45:00 | What fuels Ardie -- His kids 100%, making them proud, and practicing what he preaches about hard work and being uncomfortable by doing it in public where they can see |
From Esfahan to Sioux Falls to Bellevue, and the Mother Who Made It Happen
Ardie Sameti was born in Esfahan, Iran, a city he describes as one of the most ancient and beautiful in the world, in the middle of the Iran-Iraq War. His mother was in her mid-20s when she made the decision to leave. Post-revolution Iran had changed completely, and she wanted a different future for herself and her son. With no money, no English, and a 2-year-old in her arms, she made her way through refugee camps in Vienna, Ankara, and Geneva, and arrived in the United States in the late 1980s, sponsored by a family in Sioux Falls, South Dakota whose names Ardie still does not know and is still trying to find.
The family took them in. They lived in a basement for two or three years. His mother then heard of a Persian community in Seattle and moved to the Pacific Northwest, where she and Ardie cycled through Lynnwood, the Rainier area, and eventually Bellevue, navigating Section 8 housing and welfare while she worked constantly. His father came later, did not do well in the US, and was incarcerated. Ardie grew up largely with his mother as the only stable adult in his life. He does not tell this story with self-pity. He tells it the way someone does who has spent years translating hardship into motivation and has arrived at something that looks like genuine, unconflicted gratitude.
"I don't see my journey as like, oh my God, I'm -- I feel bad for myself. I feel really lucky and I feel a deep, deep sense of gratitude."
He grew up in Bellevue, attended elementary school, middle school, and high school there, and met Ali, now his wife, their senior year of high school. They dated into their freshman year of college, broke up, lived their separate lives for a stretch, and found their way back to each other. She went to WSU. He did a couple of semesters at Bellevue Community College, then dropped out to help his mother. He does not frame this as a sacrifice. He frames it as the beginning of his real education.
Running Restaurants at 18, and What Comes After You Hit the Ceiling
Ardie's path into business started through a man he called his uncle, who was not a blood relative but who owned several Romeo's Pizza and Pasta franchise locations across Washington. The uncle needed someone he trusted to handle accounting and back-office work. Ardie took the job. He fell in love with the P&L almost immediately: the margins, the food costs, the labor ratios, the levers you could pull to move revenue. Within a year and a half, the uncle made him general manager of all three locations. Ardie was 18 years old and could not legally drink at the bar he was managing.
He responded by doing what he has always done in rooms where he has no formal authority: he came in with humility, learned every function from dishwasher to bartender, and made himself genuinely useful to the people around him. A location came up for sale in Factoria in Bellevue. He took out a loan and bought it. He ran it for years at 100 hours a week. He then transitioned into restaurant consulting, helping operators scale and eventually becoming director of operations for Osteria La Spiga, an authentic Italian restaurant in Seattle, and then Milagro Cantina, which won best new restaurant when it opened. He hit a ceiling. He watched his wife come home from teaching fulfilled in a way he was not. They talked about having a family. He decided to look for something different.
"I sat in a room with Harvard Business grads and they're pretending to be the CEO of Ben and Jerry's. In the back of my head, I'm like, this isn't how business works at all."
The transition happened because of one meeting at the Old Bellevue Merchants Association, a city board representing businesses on Main Street in downtown Bellevue. Ardie was attending on behalf of the 520 Bar and Grill, where he was general manager. A presenter came in to announce that Concur Technologies was moving from Redmond to downtown Bellevue. The presenter was Rajeev Singh, co-founder of Concur. Ardie describes watching him speak and thinking he had never seen anything like it. He beelined to Singh afterward, introduced himself, got his number, and started calling. He kept calling. Eventually Singh called back, and eventually Ardie had a seat at Accolade.
Nine Years at Accolade, and the Gap That Became Scala
Rajeev Singh told Ardie directly: do the most uncomfortable roles in this business. Learn product and technology. Learn sales and marketing. Be well-rounded. Ardie took that literally. He had no formal technology background. He had run restaurants. He sat alongside clinicians and care advocates in Accolade's contact center, mapped every workflow from first principles, and started writing requirements for engineering teams. He worked with people he describes, consistently, as much smarter than himself. He contributed by working hard, asking good questions, and applying the operational instincts he had built running pizza restaurants to a healthcare engagement center supporting millions of member lives.
By the time he left, Accolade had grown from a few hundred thousand lives to more than 15 million, had gone through an IPO, and had expanded into virtual primary care. Ardie had headed up AI and platform initiatives. He had also identified the gap that Scala was built to close: operators running large contact centers had data everywhere and insight nowhere. The tools built for them described problems but did not diagnose them. They could tell you what happened but not why, and they gave you no clear path to action. Ardie and Singh founded Scala in July 2025, came out of stealth in February 2026 with $8.5 million from Madrona and FUSE, and have built a team of about 15 people, almost entirely composed of people Ardie already trusted from his prior life.
"This is me basically, us building something because we understand the gravity of running a contact center at scale. They're not the issue, it's the systems that are broken."
He describes the Scala platform as a love letter to operators. The product includes agentic process automation, conversational AI, an AI coworker product called Pulse Assist that functions as an ops chief of staff, and a performance intelligence module that surfaces the health of the business in real time. The target customers are healthcare, travel, and financial services, with healthcare as the natural starting point given the team's background. Ardie is emphatic that the platform is not flashy and is not supposed to be. Operators are drowning in complexity. The UI should be seamless. The technology under the hood should be invisible. AI done right, he says, should feel like less is more.
5 Key Takeaways
🫶
Gratitude is not a personality trait -- it is built through difficulty
Ardie arrived in the US at age 2 with a mother who had no money and no English. He is direct that this history is not a wound; it is a source. He feels genuinely lucky, and attributes that capacity for gratitude specifically to having experienced genuine scarcity.
🍕
The restaurant industry teaches business faster than almost anything else
Running a franchise location in Factoria at 18 with 100-hour weeks gave Ardie a working understanding of margins, labor, process, and people management that he says outpaced the Harvard Business School case study methodology he later observed from the inside.
📬
The cold introduction to the right person is worth years of conventional career advancement
Ardie introduced himself to Rajeev Singh at a city merchants board meeting, got his number, and kept calling until Singh called back. That one introduction led to Accolade, which led to Scala. He names Singh as the person who has believed in him longest and most consistently.
🧠
Build the product you wished you had when you were the customer
Scala was built because Ardie had spent nine years on the operator side of contact center technology and knew exactly what was broken. The platform is designed for people running the kind of operations he used to run, not for people who have read about them.
👨👩👧👦
Practice what you preach where your kids can see you do it
Ardie says one reason he took on the risk of a startup was to show his children what it looks like to struggle and try to build something from scratch. He preaches hard work and discomfort. He wants them to watch him do both.
Ardie Sameti Scala Rajeev Singh Accolade Madrona FUSE What Fuels You Shauna Swerland Fuel Talent AI Startup Contact Center Operational Intelligence Iranian American Immigrant Founder Refugee Entrepreneur Bellevue Startup Pacific Northwest Concur Technologies Enterprise AI Customer Experience Resilience Grit
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Ardie Sameti and what is Scala?
Ardie Sameti is the co-founder and CEO of Scala, a Bellevue-based AI startup that emerged from stealth in February 2026 with $8.5 million in seed funding from Madrona and FUSE. Scala is building the first operational intelligence platform designed specifically for modern contact centers, where human agents and AI work side by side. The company was co-founded with Rajeev Singh, who co-founded Concur Technologies, led Accolade through its IPO, and currently serves as CEO of Smartsheet. Before founding Scala, Ardie spent nearly a decade at Accolade leading AI and platform initiatives that supported over 15 million member lives.
What is Ardie Sameti's background before founding Scala?
Ardie arrived in the United States as a refugee from Iran at age 2, grew up in Bellevue on Section 8 housing, and dropped out of college to help support his mother. He became the GM of three Romeo's Pizza and Pasta franchise locations at 18, bought one of the locations himself, and eventually ran restaurant consulting for fine dining establishments in Seattle including Osteria La Spiga and Milagro Cantina. He transitioned into technology after introducing himself to Rajeev Singh at a Bellevue merchants board meeting and ultimately joined Singh at Accolade, where he spent nearly a decade before co-founding Scala.
What problem does Scala solve for contact centers?
Ardie Sameti explained on What Fuels You that contact center operators have data spread across many disconnected systems, but the tools available to them describe what happened without diagnosing why or providing a clear path to action. Scala is building an operational intelligence platform that unifies that data, surfaces actionable insights, and allows operators to manage performance, cost, and customer experience outcomes in real time. The platform includes agentic process automation, a conversational AI coworker called Pulse Assist, and a performance intelligence module designed specifically for customer experience leaders in healthcare, travel, and financial services.
How did Ardie Sameti meet Rajeev Singh?
Ardie was serving on the Old Bellevue Merchants Association as general manager of the 520 Bar and Grill when Rajeev Singh presented at a board meeting to announce that Concur Technologies was moving to downtown Bellevue. Ardie was struck by how Singh spoke and introduced himself immediately afterward. He got Singh's contact information, started reaching out consistently, and eventually was invited to join Singh and Mike Hilton at Accolade, which became a nine-year chapter of Ardie's career. Singh is now co-founder and executive chair of Scala.
What does Ardie Sameti say about raising resilient children?
On What Fuels You, Ardie described the challenge he and his wife Ali face in raising three young children in circumstances very different from his own upbringing. He said they talk about it every day: they want their kids to fail, to be uncomfortable, and to build grit, but they struggle with how to create real difficulty for children who have never genuinely lacked anything. His answer is to lead by example, taking on the risk and discomfort of building a startup specifically so his children can watch him struggle to build something from scratch.
