All Episodes
Fund/Build/Scale — 133 episodes · page 1 of 2
How Much Proof Does a Consumer Startup Need to Raise Money?
What You Permit Is What Gets Produced
EHow VCs Judge Founders With No Track Record
What Investors Learn When They Watch You Talk To Customers
How to Get Through a Tech Layoff Without Losing Yourself
Before You Build in Senior Care, Figure Out Who Pays
How to Know If Your Startup Idea Is Worth Pursuing
Why Technical Founders Should Stop Answering Questions
EIf It’s Not on Paper, It’s Not Real: Canvas Prime's Rebecca Lynn
Why Technical Founders Hire Marketing Too Late
CVC Is Not Your Exit Strategy or GTM Plan
AI Makes Building Easier. Selling Is Still Hard.
EThe Most Expensive Money You'll Ever Raise
Why Most Startups Shouldn't Raise Money (Even If They Can)
Money Is the Only Customer Validation That Matters
EWhat Hospitals Are Actually Buying in the AI Boom
The 10x Rule: Turning a Research Paper into an AI Company
Your First Marketing Hire Is Probably Not a CMO
How AI-Native Startups Actually Get Built
EWhy Great Founders Are “Angry at the Problem”
EBefore There Is Proof: Build a Startup Story That Shows You Can Execute
How to Hire Your First Offshore Team Without Screwing It Up
How Technical Founders Win the First 5 Minutes With Investors
Don’t Wait for the IPO: How Tech Employees Actually Get Liquid
Turning Utility Into Habit: Beyond Basic Gamification
EThe Day You Raise Money Is the Day You Stop Focusing on Technology
ESelling Unproven AI to Skeptical Enterprise Buyers
From Seed to Growth: What African Founders Need to Know
What Investors Actually Look For in the First 18 Months
Is the Defensible Moat a Myth in AI?
Building Against Giants: Turning Insider Expertise into a Startup Advantage
EFrom Scarcity to Scale: Building Startups in Latin America’s Earliest Stages
Why Black Startup Founders Have to Play a Different Game
Building an Enterprise AI Startup from Day Zero
EBuilding in Layers: The Compound Startup Playbook
How to Build in a Market That Won’t Let You In
EHow to Prove You’re Building a Venture-Scale Company
The "Marionette Threat" of Generative AI with All Tech is Human’s David Polgar
Cyan Banister & Cristian Cibils Bernardes: Early Signals, Founder-Investor Fit, and Trustworthy Consumer AI
From Engineer to CEO: Ryan Wang on Building Assembled and Finding Product-Market Fit
The Starting Five: How to Build a Leadership Team That Can Scale
From Code to Customer: The Strategic Power of a Field CTO
Dead Weight on the Cap Table: Inside the Ugly World of Founder Breakups
An Operator’s Playbook for Monetizing Product-Led Growth
Building a Bridge Across the Valley of Death
Are You *Really* Ready to Raise a Round? Here’s How to Tell
From Side Project to Series B: How Learning Led to Product-Market Fit
Building Hard Tech: Lessons on Funding, Teams, and Timelines
Forget the Spin: Startup Myths That Hold Founders Back
EAvoiding Founder Burnout and other Early-Stage Startup Pitfalls
De-Risking Deep Tech: How to Land Seed Capital for Complex Ideas
Execution > Ideas: What Engineers Need to Know Before Becoming Founders
How to Think Like a VC When You’re Building (or Joining) a Startup
Cap Table Strategy: A Playbook for Early-Stage Founders
From D2C to B2B: How to Pivot Without Losing Your Mission
How to Sell Your World-Changing Idea to a Mission-Driven Investor
Why Conviction Matters More Than TAM: The Seed-Stage Litmus Test
How (and How Not) to Pitch a Cybersecurity VC
Deep Tech Without Stealth: Inside Dusty Robotics’ Origin Story
Leveraging Founder-Market Fit to Win Over Risk-Averse Buyers
From Side Project to API Powerhouse: How Postman Went Global
When a Power User Becomes CEO: How Medium Found Its Way Back
Muse Capital’s Approach to Finding Value in Overlooked Markets
Creative Ops at Startup Speed: Lessons from Superside
How to Pitch VCs Like a “Dangerous” Founder
The 5-Year Ramp: How Alcatraz Scaled in Enterprise Security
EFrom Play to Pay: How Soundtrack Uses PQLs to Drive Growth
From ML Engineer to CEO: Brightwave's Mike Conover on Turning Technical Vision into Company Strategy
What Investors Really Want From AI Founders
The Art of the Waitlist: Siqi Chen on Driving Scarcity, Hype, and Feedback Loops
PR Advice for Founders in the AI Era
The Hard Tech Hustle: Building and Selling Industrial AI
Inside a VC’s Playbook for Capital-Intensive Startups
Building a Market from Scratch: Generative Music for Enterprise Customers
How a Broke College Student Co-founded a VC-Backed Edtech Startup
EIs AI Compute Broken? Tim Davis on Modular’s $130M Bet
Scaling European Startups: What Works, What Doesn’t, and What’s Changing
EWhat Journey’s Pivot from B2C to B2B Reveals About Enterprise Sales
EWhat Your CEO Won't Tell You About Your Stock Options
Why PR Comes Before PMF
Investor Insights for African Startups with Capria Ventures’ Mobola da-Silva
KarmaCheck CEO Eric Ly on Customer Discovery + Early Product Development
Inside Acceldata: CEO Rohit Choudhary on Building a Leading Data Platform
Vouch CEO Sam Hodges on Mitigating Startup Risk and Maximizing Growth
Navigating Blue Oceans: Key Insights for Emerging Founders from Vectara CEO/co-founder Amr Awadallah
E2025 Cybersecurity Trends, Insights and Storytelling Advice from YL Ventures' Andy Ellis
Lessons from Operant AI's Startup Journey: “ We're not wasting time on wheel spinning.”
Mercury Raise 2024 Survey: Founder Challenges, Fundraising Trends, and the AI Hype Cycle
Rusty Ralston and Jay Patil of Swell VC: A Hands-on Approach to Building Startups
ESeed-stage Valuation Insights from Lightspeed's Nnamdi Iregbulem
Dan DeGolier: How Fractional CFOs Become a CEO's 'Strategic Teammate'
MaC Venture Capital’s Marlon Nichols Offers Seed-stage Insights for Future CEOs
From PhD to CEO: Sahil Agarwal of Enkrypt AI Shares Essential Lessons for Aspiring Founders
Transforming Practical Wisdom into Iconic Brands with David Placek
From concept to Series A: How Inversion got its space-based cargo platform off the ground
EHow to run a board meeting in 60 minutes
EStarting up in stealth: A conversation with TigerEye co-founder/CEO Tracy Young
E“Talent has no ZIP code:” Laura González-Estéfani on building startups outside Silicon Valley
E“Cultural fit” is a polite way to say “personal bias”
Shaping the future of work and care: Courtney Leimkuhler + Elana Berkowitz of Springbank