PODCAST · business
Founders and Empanadas
by NeoWork
Hey, I'm Joshua Eidelman, Founder and CEO of NeoWork. Throughout my career, I've explored the hidden challenges founders face. From creating an AR startup to working at Bird during hypergrowth, I've had countless discussions about founders' struggles. I'm now on a journey to share important stories and insights with founders worldwide. I'll explore tech leadership's hidden struggles and triumphs, providing a platform for honest discussions, while eating delicious empanadas.
Episodes
-
Why He Wants His Employees to Question Him | Tonner Jackson @ Rare Days
He shot 500 shots a day, 7 to 8 in the morning, on a shooting machine in his high school gym. If he skipped it, the anxiety going into the weekend was unbearable. He still remembers his friend Adam offering to pick him up on a Friday night and having to say no because he had shots to get up....
-
95% of AI Pilots Die for One Reason | Brian M. Green, Health Vision AI
Brian M. Green got laid off, and instead of going straight back into the market he asked himself what he was actually good at. He'd spent decades on the data side of things, a master's in urban planning he never practiced with, a PhD candidate in public policy and health, and a long habit of…
more -
Why He Thinks the Big AI Labs Don’t Survive to 2030 | Alok Aggarwal @ Scry AI
In 1993 the CEO of a paper mill in Portland, Maine came down to IBM Research and asked for help. Alok Aggarwal’s team told him the truth, which was that they had no idea how paper gets made. They spent three months learning, then built a scheduling system out of agents and meta-learning, words…
more -
Why He Thinks the AI Labs Are Playing the Wrong Game | Rishi Bhatnagar @ Quaeris
Almost everyone who climbs Kilimanjaro stops at Stella Point and calls it the summit. It isn't. The actual highest point in Africa is Uhuru Peak, roughly ten blocks further on, and Rishi Bhatnagar says that ten-block walk was the hardest forty minutes of his life. What kept him going was…
more -
What Entrepreneurship Cost Him and Why He Calls It His Best Investment, with Marco Benitez @ ROOK
Marco Benitez was preparing to move his family from Mexico to Switzerland for the next chapter of a successful Big Pharma career when his wife asked him four words: “Why are you so sad?” He already knew the answer. The small fitness product he was building outside work made him feel more alive…
more -
How to Thrive in the AI Age as an Outsourcing Business Built on Humans | Matt Narciso @ SuperStaff
Matt Narciso started his career answering angry calls at a Dish Network help desk. Thirteen years later he was running the kind of company he once took calls for. In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, he sits down in Medellín with Joshua Eidelman (his friend and direct competitor in the...
-
How to Learn Any Field From Zero, According to a Founder Who's Done It 5x | Yusif Gurbanli
At 26, Yusif Gurbanli has already worked at CERN, traded at J.P. Morgan, built aircraft for NASA, and finished a PhD reconstructing human knees with AI. Most people would call that scattered. Yusif calls it the whole strategy. Yusif is the co-founder and CFO of AIdMD, a clinical AI platform...
-
Why This AI Founder Refuses to Use OpenAI with Hilary Mason @ Hidden Door
Hilary Mason was one of the most recognizable names in data science: chief scientist at bitly, founder of Fast Forward Labs, co-author of Ethics and Data Science. Then she walked away to build Hidden Door, a roleplaying platform where you step inside licensed story worlds with an AI narrator...
-
Why This Founder Stopped Hiring Specialists (and Who She Hires Instead) with Dr. Myra Ahmad
Dr. Myra Ahmad graduated from medical school in 2022, looked at the system she'd just trained inside, called it dystopian, and decided to build something outside of it instead of starting a residency. Three years later, Mochi Health has served more than 500,000 patients across all 50 states. In...
-
How to Stay Customer-Obsessed and Never Investor-Obsessed in Running Your Business with Rand Fishkin
Rand Fishkin built Moz from a struggling web-design agency into a $60 million software company and watched venture capital quietly turn it from a business that served customers into one that served investors. His verdict, over pineapple empanadas: raising VC was the second-biggest mistake of his...
-
Why Storytelling Is the Last Moat You Have Left, with Jenna Reback
Jenna Reback can taste words. Her own name tastes like blueberries, which is why she named her company Blueberry. She has synesthesia, a rare neuro-sensory condition that made childhood disorienting and lonely, and forced her to become obsessed with one question: how do you make someone else...
-
Why Gaming is 10x Better for Human Connection Than Social Media Ever Will Be | Sanjay Guruprasad
Most social apps were built to make you feel connected without requiring you to actually be. Sanjay Guruprasad has been building against that assumption for eight years. His thesis: the only online interaction that replicates the way humans have always built real relationships is playing games...
-
The 2x YC-Backed PhD Founder Who Learned Why Great Technology Is NOT Enough | Andrea Mazzocchi
Andrea Mazzocchi defended her PhD, applied to Y Combinator, and watched the country shut down for COVID all on the same weekend. That was May 2020. By the end of the year, she had a wet lab running, a seed round closing, and a company called Known Medicine using 3D tumor organoids to predict…
more -
10,000 Hours of Play: Stop Grinding, Start Playing | Yu-kai Chou
Starting in 2003, years before anyone was using the term, Yu-kai Chou began developing what would become the Octalysis Framework: a model of human motivation built around 8 core drives that influence every decision we make. He gamified his own life first. Then his companies. Then Fortune 500s.…
more -
What Conflict Zones Taught This Founder About Building a Gaming Startup with Jessica Murrey
Jessica Murrey won a Regional Emmy at 24 for an anti-child abuse campaign, then spent seven years training young activists and former extremists in countries recovering from genocide and civil war: Myanmar, Burundi, Nigeria, Colombia. She came home asking: how do you scale this? The answer was a...
-
Two Exits, 180 Angel Investments, and Why 90% of Jobs Are Gone with Serial Entrepreneur Sahin Boydas
Sahin Boydas moved from Turkey to San Francisco in 2012 with no network, no warm intros, and a conviction that remote work was going to change everything, about a decade before COVID made it unavoidable. What followed was four companies, two exits (MovieLaLa to Gfycat, RemoteTeam.com to Gusto in...
-
Why Your Authenticity Is Your Best Marketing Asset with Renee Gittins
Renee Gittins didn't take the conventional path. She built her own. She started as a biomedical engineer, then walked away from biotech at 21 to teach herself game development from scratch: moonlighting on her own game while working day jobs to pay the bills. That game, Potions: A Curious Tale,...
-
From IGN Acquisition at 11 to $100M Exit Insights: Adam Lieb on What It Actually Takes to Win in Gaming
Adam Lieb sold his first gaming website to IGN at age 11. Before he could drive, he was earning $10,000 a week selling virtual goods in MMORPGs. Before he graduated college, he was running a 25-site gaming network doing multimillion-dollar revenue. He's never had a real job. He's never needed…
more -
Building a Global Game Studio with Former Blizzard Exec Tim Morten @ Frost Giant
Tim Morten led production on StarCraft II at Blizzard before founding Frost Giant Studios. In this conversation, he breaks down the economic forces reshaping game development: from the oversaturation crisis (20,000+ games per year) to the post-pandemic VC correction that's forcing studios to do...
-
The Secret to Building a People-First Agency (and Paying Yourself as a Founder) with Alex Stewart
Alex Stewart didn’t raise a round. He didn’t move to San Francisco. He didn’t “grind” 100 hours a week. He built Teamtown, a growing design agency, by doing things differently. This week on Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Alex to unpack how he built a profitable, people-first...
-
Beyond Age Gates: Building a Safer Internet for Kids with Kieran Donovan
Most kids’ first interaction with the internet is lying about their age. Kieran Donovan is building the fix. Kieran left a top global law firm (he became one of the youngest partners at Latham & Watkins and is the only person to win “Privacy Lawyer of the Year” multiple times) to found k-ID. It’s…
more -
Fire Yourself From Every Job (and More Founder Frameworks) with Wilian Iralzabal
Wilian Iralzabal didn’t leave Google to “be a Webflow guy.” He left because he wanted to design a business he could live with and then built one that ships at enterprise scale. Cuban immigrant at 8. Door-to-door sales at 14. Two startups acquired by Google. In 2019 he walked away, started small,...
-
How To Keep A-Players (Without Perks or Ping-Pong), with Brianna Carney
Brianna Carney runs CrewBloom across 20+ countries and is building Betty, a voice AI that handles outbound qualification so humans can spend more time on higher-value work. Her operating system is disarmingly simple: work comes second, standards stay high, AI augments people, and leaders model…
more -
From Zirtual’s Overnight Collapse to Adios: How Maren Kate Rebuilt and Bet on Reuse
From Zirtual’s Overnight Collapse to Adios: How Maren Kate Rebuilt and Bet on Reuse At 27, Maren Kate Donovan was running a 400-person remote company doing roughly $1M/month. Then, in a single day, Zirtual shut down. Instead of disappearing, she did the unglamorous work: a post-mortem, learning…
more -
Why Denis Lussault Still Builds in the Real World (While Everyone Else Stays in Figma)
What happens when a hardcore operator decides to build for the physical world? Denis Lussault has scaled companies where things actually move: robots, vending machines, and industrial systems that keep the real world running. After 10 years in automotive and oil & gas, he joined Balyo to build...
-
From $100K Deals to Rewiring Burned-Out Founders: Why Korneel Desmet Walked Away
After scaling multiple companies, including a 70-person video agency working with clients like Coca-Cola and Disney, Korneel Desmet hit a wall. Not once. But twice. From penthouses in London to a van in the Spanish mountains, this episode is the story of a founder who lost himself in the hustle…
more -
From $0.17 to $100K: How Thomas Geib Built a Business Out of Loneliness
Thomas Geib had a thriving real estate business, a fast-growing mastermind, and everything figured out… until he didn’t. After a failed business partnership, 60K in debt, and just $0.17 left in his bank account, Thomas found himself questioning everything. But instead of quitting, he doubled…
more -
From Doctor to $700M Healthtech Founder: How Alexi Nazem Scaled Nomad Health During the Pandemic
What happens when a practicing physician builds a $700M healthcare startup? In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua sits down with Dr. Alexi Nazem: Co-founder & former CEO of Nomad Health, Assistant Professor at Weill Cornell, and now a General Partner at AlleyCorp. Alexi shares his…
more -
How to Build the Right Thing: Christie Kaplan on UX, Founder Psychology, and PMF
Christie Kaplan is the founder of Startup Design Partners, a design-led venture studio that helps early-stage teams go from chaos to clarity, before they waste six months building the wrong thing. In this episode, Christie and Josh dive into the real work of product design: making hard decisions,...
-
From Loom to Leads: How Bethany Stachenfeld (Co-founder and CEO @ Sendspark) Built a Video Engine for Customer Creation
What if you could personalize every cold email (without recording a thousand videos)? Bethany Stachenfeld is the Co-Founder & CEO of Sendspark, the video platform trusted by teams at Salesforce, Oracle, Outreach, and LinkedIn to drive 400%+ more engagement through asynchronous, AI-personalized...
-
Why Most Wearables Are Lying to You: Mitchell Leshchiner on Health Data, AI, and Performance
When I first came across Mitchell Leshchiner on LinkedIn, I immediately DM’d him and said: “I don’t know what ElectroKare is exactly… but I know I need to learn more.” Mitchell is the kind of founder you can’t ignore. He’s a former pro athlete, Palantir-trained engineer, and now CEO of…
more -
The Invisible Friction Killing Your Deals with Gal Aga, co-Founder and CEO at Aligned
Most sales teams lose the deal after the demo, not because the pitch fell flat, but because their champion didn’t know how to sell it internally. In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, I sat down with Gal Aga, CEO and co-founder of Aligned, to unpack the psychological friction that stalls…
more -
Will Allred @ Lavender on AI SDRs, Content That Actually Works, and Keeping Your Company Fun
Will Allred didn’t set out to build the world’s best email coach. He was trying to sell a psychology-based marketing platform. Then COVID hit, their customers stopped paying, and they had 45 days of runway left. What happened next? A quick pivot, a squeal of excitement from their first user, and...
-
What Founders Get Wrong About Mindfulness, with Tom Coburn @ Waking Up
Tom Coburn co-founded Jebbit in a college dorm room, scaled it over 13 years, raised $90M, and eventually sold the company to BlueConic. Today, he’s the CEO of Waking Up — one of the most popular meditation apps in the world. In this episode, we talk about what it means to train your mind like…
more -
From Kyrgyzstan to Kodif: Building Agentic AI for the Future of Customer Experience
Everyone thinks AI is coming to take over customer support. But Chyngyz Dzhumanazarov thinks it’s coming to expose your lack of systems. In this episode, the Kodif CEO breaks down what most founders get wrong about implementing AI, why early-stage focus can be dangerous, and how support teams...
-
From Burnout to Systems Thinking: A Doctor’s Guide to Founding Right, with Dr. Osama Hashmi @ Impiricus
In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Dr. Osama Hashmi, dermatologist and co-founder of Impiricus, a next-gen healthtech platform transforming how pharma companies engage with physicians. They go deep into what it really takes to build a globally distributed,...
-
Firing, Fake Resumes, and the Future of Offshore Work, with Omer Bloch @ Remote Latinos
In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Omer Bloch, founder of Remote Latinos, to talk about the real (and often uncomfortable) truths behind global hiring, building remote teams, and what most founders get dead wrong about culture. Omer has helped 700+ companies...
-
Why Teens Trust Mentors More Than Therapists (And What That Says About All of Us), with Patrick Gilligan @ Somethings
This week on Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Patrick Gilligan, founder of Somethings, a behavioral health platform connecting teens with young adult peer mentors who’ve been through it themselves. Patrick opens up about the emotional cost of working in youth mental health…
more -
Scaling Food Waste Solutions: Smarter AI, Smaller Footprint, with Adam Bailey, Co-Founder & CTO @ Topanga
The future doesn’t belong to the loudest idea. It belongs to the teams that can execute in the messiest industries. In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua sits down with Adam Bailey, Co-Founder and CTO of Topanga.io, to explore what it really takes to scale technology that solves...
-
Building Games, Battling Burnout, and Betting on Global Talent, with Max Albert, CEO of Adrenaline Interactive
Is in-game advertising the future of media? Can Hearthstone be a mental health tool? Why do most founders fail with overseas talent? In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, I sit down with Max Albert—founder of Adrenaline Interactive and former eSports athlete turned venture-backed gaming…
more -
Innovation Isn’t a Brainstorm: How to Build When the Playbook Breaks, with Michigan Labs’ Mark Johnson
Most leaders talk about innovation. Mark Johnson actually builds for it. In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, I sit down with Mark Johnson, Co-Founder of Michigan Software Labs, to unpack what innovation really looks like inside high-stakes teams, enterprise orgs, and day-to-day life. We…
more -
Tied Up in Brazil, Broke in Sri Lanka, and Evan Cassidy Still Built a 7-Figure Agency
What do you do when you’re hogtied at gunpoint in a Brazilian penthouse? Or broke in Sri Lanka trying to make a business work from scratch? For Evan Cassidy, those weren’t hypotheticals—they were chapter one. In this raw and revealing episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down…
more -
Support Is Not a Cost Center: How to Scale CX Without Losing Your Soul, with Susana De Sousa
Is your customer support team seen as a cost center—or a strategic growth engine? In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Susana De Sousa, CX advisor and former leader at Airbnb and Loom, to challenge the outdated thinking around support. They dive deep into how...
-
The Founder's Status Limbo, AI Anxiety, and the Art of Clear Communication
Starting a company means embracing a strange, often uncomfortable reality: status limbo.One day, you’re managing a team, earning a solid paycheck, and working in a nice office. The next, you’re back to zero—no salary, no brand recognition, no credibility beyond your own conviction. It’s the most...
-
How To Maintain Your Company’s Culture During a Period of Rapid Growth, with Melissa Rosenthal
In this episode, Joshua Eidelman sits down with marketing powerhouse Melissa Rosenthal to discuss her journey from media disruptor at BuzzFeed to B2B marketing innovator at ClickUp. Melissa shares candid insights on applying B2C strategies to B2B marketing, building high-performing teams during...
-
Why Most Leaders Miss Their Team's Genius Zone: Unlocking Hidden Talent, with Dawn Eidelman, PhD
There's something special about sharing empanadas and diving into deep conversations about life, learning, and entrepreneurship with family. Last week, I had the joy of sitting down with Dr. Dawn Eidelman—who happens to be my mother—for an episode of Founders and Empanadas. As we talked about her...
-
How To Manage A Cross-Cultural Team Like a Pro with Joshua Eidelman, Founder of NeoWork
In this special Q&A episode, Joshua Eidelman, founder of NeoWork, answers listener questions about entrepreneurship, building global teams, and driving operational excellence across cultures. TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction 1:57 How immigrant parents shape entrepreneurial resilience 4:33 Driving...
-
The Founder-Parent Myth: Fluvio's CEO, Devon O’Rourke, on Why Having Kids Isn't What You Think
As the host of Founders and Empanadas, I've had the privilege of sitting down with many entrepreneurs to explore the intersection of business and life's major milestones. My recent conversation with Devon O'Rourke, founder of Fluvio, was particularly enlightening. We dove into how becoming a new...
-
How You Can Succeed in Business with No Safety Net, with Azure Printed Homes Founder, Gene Eidelman
From Soviet refugee to successful entrepreneur: Gene Eidelman joined his son on Founders and Empanadas to share his journey from arriving in America with $400 to building a $35M sustainable housing venture. In this episode, we explore: The unique advantages of the immigrant founder mindset How...
-
Unexpected Mistakes Founders Make When Raising and How You Can Avoid Them, with Aaron Schwartz
On this episode of Founders and Empanadas, I sat down with Aaron Schwartz, co-founder of Orita.ai, to discuss the often-overlooked pitfalls of fundraising. He shared counterintuitive insights that challenged my understanding of the fundraising process, and offered tips that can help anyone raise...
We're indexing this podcast's transcripts for the first time — this can take a minute or two. We'll show results as soon as they're ready.
No matches for "" in this podcast's transcripts.
No topics indexed yet for this podcast.
Loading reviews...
ABOUT THIS SHOW
Hey, I'm Joshua Eidelman, Founder and CEO of NeoWork. Throughout my career, I've explored the hidden challenges founders face. From creating an AR startup to working at Bird during hypergrowth, I've had countless discussions about founders' struggles. I'm now on a journey to share important stories and insights with founders worldwide. I'll explore tech leadership's hidden struggles and triumphs, providing a platform for honest discussions, while eating delicious empanadas.
HOSTED BY
NeoWork
CATEGORIES
Loading similar podcasts...
Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Founders and Empanadas have?
Founders and Empanadas currently has 65 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Founders and Empanadas about?
Hey, I'm Joshua Eidelman, Founder and CEO of NeoWork. Throughout my career, I've explored the hidden challenges founders face. From creating an AR startup to working at Bird during hypergrowth, I've had countless discussions about founders' struggles. I'm now on a journey to share important stories...
How often does Founders and Empanadas release new episodes?
Founders and Empanadas has 65 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Founders and Empanadas?
You can listen to Founders and Empanadas on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Founders and Empanadas?
Founders and Empanadas is created and hosted by NeoWork.
URL copied to clipboard!