All Episodes

E86 Clash of Fulfillment Innovators: Aaron’s Proven Scale vs. Kevin’s Robotic Vision

E85 Data-Driven Decisions are Failing Startups: Here's Why

E84 The Rise and Sudden Fall of DEI: Why Startups Are Pivoting Now

E83 Corporate Espionage & AI Takeover: Why Startup Competition Just Got CRAZIER

E82 LinkedIn is the New Press? Going Viral Without Media

E81 AI Is Changing Everything for Startups—Legal Fights to Daily Life

E80 The Death of Lean Startups? Why AI Makes Startups Harder, Not Easier 💡

E79 Why Airhouse Failed—and How Cytronic Will Win 🤖

E78 Slow Ventures’ Will’s on what it takes to be the best venture startup

E77 How Founders should Use AI from Microsoft Copilot Product lead Raj

E76 8VC’s Alex Spotted AI & Defense Trends Early | Founders, Motivation & VC Strategies Revealed

E75 AI vs Junior Engineers and CEO Safety Tips

E74 Founders: Pay yourself. 🤑 Here’s why skipping a salary early on could hurt your startup AND your future mortgage dreams. 🏡💸 #StartupLife #FounderTips

E73 What this election means for your startup, how you can use AI where incumbents can’t, Notebook LM has superpowers

E72 Company in under invested space hits $1B in revenue while only raising $10M! evaluating AI tools now and how you should use them in your startup

E71 Founders should prioritize themselves higher than anyone else in their company, are VC events worth it?

E70 Joe Fernandez shares his 2.5 year journey to find growth w/ allUP against LinkedIn

E69 How Siqi’s marketing launch of Runway got 1/10th the reach of an Apple launch

E68 Delian (Varda Space, Founders Fund) on raising / running a cap-ex heavy company, successful founders look different today, working w/ government agencies

E67 Different exit paths for startups, Software Developer job posting down 40% pre-covid

E66 Tim Novikoff of Super Teacher making enough money from selling his first company to follow his passion

E65 Siqi calls out Anthos capital on twitter, founder/vc inappropriate behaviour

E64 Debate about if AI will live up to the hype from founders in the arena

E63 Adam Fishman, instrumental in Lyft’s success turned from advisor to interim exec to media empire for Dads

E62 Sophia Amoruso on the epic rise (and fall) of Nasty Gal, why founders might consider taking secondary, and now what she’s building at TrustFundVC

E61 Immad Akhund on founding Mercury, getting it to a unicorn valuation, and how he angel invests as a founder

E60 Ronak Trivedi who created UberPOOL then started Pietra to help create brands to meeting Kanye West

E59 Peter Kazanjy created the playbook on founder lead sales and how to scale your sales org

E58 Siqi Chen’s secrets on how to raise hundreds of millions for your startup

E57 BREAKING NEWS w/ Mike Knoop of Zapier announcing AI platform Central w/ Vowel

E56 w/ with Waseem Daher of Pilot on getting Jeff Bezos to invest in your company, successful exits and billion dollar company ideas

E55 We reached 50k views last episode! Kevin Gibbon just got a term sheet and explains how brutal it out there.

E54 w/ the founder of Intro Raad Mobrem sharing why he started it, how it works and why Nikita Bier makes so much money on it

E53 w/ 3rd time founder Mike Adams on learnings including AI and choosing to step down from CEO

E52 w/ Box’s @levie on how to take your company to IPO, the future of AI, and his best advice for founders

E51 Artifact’s death, rabbit r1 + building hardware companies, second+ to market has the real startup advantage

E50 2024 predictions! Everything is 📈.AI hype cycle is “dead”? Logistics tech is next, is Gen Z too lazy? Lots of dead venture companies will fold.

E49 2023 from a founders perspectives, AI hype cycle, SVB collapse, profitability is sexy, layoffs aren’t catastrophic, tech press has changed, different exit paths

E48 Getting to $100M ARR, cutting your team in half, and 3rd time founder tips with Ryan Denehy from Electric AI

E47 Someone building in stealth on the pod and why you should or not

E46 LATEST ON OPEN AI!! But mostly how boards work for your startups work.

E45 Platform risk is real (hello OpenAI), working at big companies suck! Join or start a startup instead

E44 What we would tell ourselves if we could go back decades + tips on how to integrate AI into your startup

E43 Debate! Should you incorporate AI into your startup to raise venture right now?

E42 pivoting from PLG to direct sales, are offsites worth it?, benefits + drawbacks of a remote company

E41 Getting to PMF is all that matters, ignore all the other startup bullshit

E40 What drives us to create venture backed business

E39 Is self-care for founders even possible?

E38 Why founders shouldn’t do YC and other accelerators

E37 Can you make more cash as a founder over 20+ years vs being a senior software engineer at Google making $500k+/yr?

E36 What are the core foundations to build PMF? Market conditions separate the wheat from the chaff

E35 Is it a good time to raise a series A or B round yet? People that want their name on the blog post are the worst! PMF is very uncomfortable and may require 10-12 hr days.

E34 Winnie is profitable! Should a CEO/founder get additional equity grants / salary?

E33 Founder Stories - Klout’s success v2 Microsoft’s massive offer then Ballmer leaves

E32 Founder Stories - Klout’s success

E31 Running a venture company profitable. Chasing new platform shifts?

E30 Startup hiring practices pt 1, GTM tactics

E29 The siren song of investors, founder PTSD and common coaching questions

E28 Founder Stories - Shyp’s failure v2 - refusing $13M secondary and private jets

E27 Founder Stories - Shyp’s failure

E26 - "The best episode ever"

E25 WARTIME CEO time! IS YCombinator pushing companies' valuations up a good thing?

E24 w/ Mikael Cho of Unsplash about all the lows grinding to become top 150 sites on the internet

E23 “HEATED EPISODE”!! talking VC downturn, SVB impact, layoffs, surviving, thriving and learning during downturns

E22 w/ Joe Thomas (Loom) 3 pivots on 20k of funding until Loom started to get some traction and explode 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀

E21 w/ Dan Teran (Managed by Q & Gutter) the on-demand economy hype cycle history (2010-2016)

E19 w/ guest Amjad Masad (Replit) from Jordan to SV on his journey to create the future of programming and why Peter Thiel doesn’t look at product demos

E20 w/ guest Laura Behrens Wu (Shippo) 10 year journey from an ecomm store to a shipping API unicorn

E18 w/ guest Daryna Kulya (OpenPhone) - how to hire the best people ever and go from $0 to $1M ARR

E17 Creating Founder and Investor Networks, why they matter and how to do it over your career

E16 w/ Sahil Lavingia taking Gumroad off the VC treadmill, increasing pricing was very controversial but ultimately the right move

E15 Fundraising lessons from us who collectively have raised $300M+. Tips / tricks / fake term sheets, everything venture fundraising

E 14 w/ the core crew - burnout happens when you are becoming successful and can be crippling, how to notice it, prevent it and get out of it

E 13 w/ Sidharth Kakkar started Subscript after selling his last company to solve his xls breaking @ $5M ARR, his new company is fully remote and has no meetings

E 12 w/ Immad Akhund’s 4th company Mercury has been an “overnight” success, serendipity of living in the bay area (yes still!), making over 300 angel investments

E 11 w/ Siqi Chen built Runway because of how much building the operating model @ Sandbox VR sucked, is 5 years of runway insane? operating models are different for today's AI, ML

E 10 w/ William Hockey, Plaid getting their series A term sheet pulled from a tier 1 VC, William buys a bank to build the financial system from the bottom up, founders share everything

E 9 w/ Adam Nash, growing up in SV and going through 4 tech cycles, building in the bay vs other cities vs remote, working in fintech before it was fintech

Ep 8 - Our first guest Sara Mauskopf of Winnie, raising VC as a woman, all 5 of us are first borns and need to be CEOs, board dynamics, independent board members, Sara’s windy road building Winnie

Ep 7 - Taking John Doerr through finding PMF again, AI company raises 500x, Joe shares fake metrics, revenge of the VCs, are investor updates worth it, faustian agreement w/ VC

Ep 6 - Julien is bff’s with Andrew Mason, Pipe & other grifters, not making payroll, pushing lawyers to close financings, google employees aren’t special.

Ep 5 - topping Finland podcast rankings already, younger billionaires than ever before, launching under pseudonyms, navigating the idea maze, Joe is richer than Julien?

Ep 4 - twitter haters already, FTX, more confident founders raise more venture capital, Klout was a rocketship, our origin stories, raising at too high valuations, @Suhail founder of Mighty pivots

Ep 3 - tech layoffs, opendoor problems, asset heavy businesses, first hires

Ep 2 - Product launches, marketing your business, & Elon Musk and Twitter

Ep 1 - intro to our new podcast where we provide a unique and missing perspective from Second Time Founders of venture backed companies.