In this episode we talk with Ali Partovi about lessons learned identifying, evaluating and accelerating talent across a long and storied career in Silicon Valley. We talk about his founder experience, great investments he's made, and his new ac

EP41: Bootstrapping Boast.ai to $10M ARR with No Marketing Team with Lloyed Lobo

Sep 14th, 2023 1h 14m

EP40: AI as the next platform shift and investing in emerging technologies, with Elad Gil entrepreneur and investor

Jun 30th, 2023 48m 10s

EP39: Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to $100M+ in revenue with founder and CEO Michael Martocci

Jun 5th, 2023 52m 58s

Michael Martocci is the Founder and CEO of SwagUp, a platform that makes it easy to create, automate and distribute swag globally. In this episode we talk about:Lessons learned bootstrapping SwagUp to over $100M in revenueAdvice on managing ca

EP38: Michael Stoppelman, former SVP Engineering at Yelp and investor in 300+ companies, on building world class engineering teams and lessons learned scaling Yelp from 6 to 600 engineers

Apr 5th, 2023 47m 14s

Michael Stoppelman is the former SVP of Engineering at Yelp and profilic angel investor in 300+ startups. In early 2007, he left Google to join Yelp, and helped scale Yelp Engineering from 6 to 600 engineers. In this conversation we talked abou

EP37: Building and funding enduring fintech companies, with Cameron Peake, Partner at Restive (fintech VC) and founder of early SMB neobank Azlo (almost $1B deposits)

Mar 5th, 2023 50m 1s

Cameron Peake is a Partner at Restive Ventures, an early stage fintech focused VC fund. Previously Cameron was co-founder and CEO of Azlo, a company that provided online banking services for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and freelancers, and

EP36: Semil Shah (founder Haystack, early investor in DoorDash, Instacart, Figma) on the current fundraising market and building intuition to pick winners early

Jan 25th, 2023 38m 41s

Semil is the founder and GP at Haystack, an early-stage VC firm with $450M+ AUM. He’s an investor in 200+ companies including DoorDash, Instacart, Hashicorp, Figma and more. In this conversation we discuss the current funding environment, Semil

EP35: Beerud Sheth, founder of Upwork ($1.5B public co) and Gupshup ($1.4B unicorn), on the resilience and grit needed to build two generational companies

Jan 18th, 2023 56m 9s

Beerud Sheth in a rare founder who’s started not one, but two unicorns — UpWork and Gupshup. He’s seen a lot of pivotal moments in SV history — having started Upwork in 1998 before the dot com bubble, and Gupshup in 2005, three years before th

EP34: Finding product-market fit and blitzscaling a healthcare marketplace 25x in 18 months, with Wei Deng, CEO/Founder Clipboard Health ($1.3B)

Dec 20th, 2022 43m 19s

Wei is the founder of Clipboard Health. Clipboard Health makes it really easy for nurses to search for jobs based on what they're qualified for and what they care about, and apply with one click.Over the last few years, Clipboard has have exper

EP33: Building and scaling network-based enterprise businesses with James McGillicuddy, former Head of Strategy at Carta ($7.4B) and COO SourceGraph ($2.6B)

Dec 20th, 2022 42m 49s

In this conversation, we speak with James McGillicuddy. James was previously Head of Strategy at Carta ($7.4B valuation) where he brought products like CartaX to market, and before that was the COO and early team member of SourceGraph — a unive

EP32: Building and launching cross-chain crypto infrastructure, with Bryan Pellegrino, founder/CEO of Layer Zero ($140M Series A)

Dec 6th, 2022 54m 9s

Bryan is the founder of LayerZero Labs, which is an omnichain interoperability protocol that unites decentralized applications across disparate blockchains, enabling cross-chain applications.LayerZero Labs is building foundational crypto infras

EP31: Kunal Shah on building breakout consumer internet products, founding Cred ($6.4B) and Freecharge ($450M exit), and angel investing in 200+ Indian startups

Nov 30th, 2022 51m 57s

Kunal Shah is a serial entrepreneur and founder of two iconic Indian companies -- CRED and Freecharge. CRED is an Indian consumer fintech that is valued at over $6.4B, and Freecharge was one of the earliest Indian fintechs that sold to Snapdeal

EP30: Building web3 email, drive and docs with a privacy-first and decentralized approach, with Andrew Milich, founder of Skiff ($10M Series A led by Sequoia)

Oct 30th, 2022 43m 53s

Andrew is the founder of Skiff, which is a privacy-first, end-to-end encrypted, wallet native workspace with email, file sharing, and collaboration.Skiff has hundreds of thousands of users and is part of a broader trend towards privacy-first an

EP29: Keith Rabois on navigating the downturn, developing good judgement, and building an iconic company

Sep 8th, 2022 35m 20s

Keith is a Silicon Valley legend— an accomplished operator, founder, and investor. He started his career as an early executive at PayPal, LinkedIn and Square, before going on to co-found companies like OpenDoor (which IPO’d in 2020) and OpenSto

EP28: Building an open source powered product and company, with AppSmith Co-Founder/CEO Abhishek Nayak

Jul 20th, 2022 41m 4s

Abhishek is the co-founder and CEO of AppSmith, which is a low-code tool that helps developers build dashboards and admin panels very quickly. AppSmith has raised over $50M from investors like Accel, Bessemer, Insight and Prasanna Sankar (previ

EP27: Building crypto products for mainstream users, with CoinList Co-Founder and Eco Co-Founder/CEO Andy Bromberg

Jul 11th, 2022 49m 48s

Andy is a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Eco a new kind of wallet to spend, send and save money. It combines traditional banking rails with crypto rails to deliver a new kind of experience that creates more value for customers in an easy to acc

EP26: Reimagining healthcare from first principles, with Forward Founder/CEO Adrian Aoun

Jun 19th, 2022 44m 55s

Adrian is a serial entrepreneur and currently Founder/CEO of Forward. Forward is a healthcare startup that provides a membership-based healthcare system. Forward is redesigning the way healthcare is delivered using cutting edge technology that

EP25: Founding and scaling a logistics unicorn, with ShipBob Co-Founder/CEO Dhruv Saxena

Jun 11th, 2022 40m 26s

Dhruv is the Co-Founder/CEO of ShipBob, the leading global omni-fulfillment platform designed to provide small and medium-sized businesses access to best-in-class supply chain and fulfillment capabilities.Dhruv started ShipBob in his Chicago ap

EP24: Market landscape and opportunities in the Indian software ecosystem, with Nikhil Sachdev, Managing Director at Insight Partners focused on software, fintech and crypto

Jun 7th, 2022 32m 42s

Nikhil is a managing director at Insight Partners, where he invests in software, fintech, and crypto companies. In this conversation we talk about the recent market corrections, investment landscape in the Indian startup ecosystem, and some of

EP23: Building in public and the future of AI powered creative tools, with Paul Yacoubian, founder/CEO of Copy.AI

May 23rd, 2022 40m 1s

Paul Yacoubian is the founder/CEO of Copy.AI. CopyAI is building AI-powered tools that help users automatically generate marketing copy in seconds, and has over 1M registered users.Paul is an extremely positive and inspiring presence on twitter

EP22: Lessons from building world class teams at Carta and DoorDash, with Nolan Church, founder/CEO of Continuum, ex-Chief People Officer at Carta, ex-Head of Talent at DoorDash

May 15th, 2022 1h 6m

Nolan is one of the best HR leaders in the world for high growth startups. He’s currently the Founder/CEO at Continuum, which is a talent marketplace that helps startups hire the best people for key functional needs, and helps executives work w

EP21: Building and growing a community of over 15M Indian women, with Sairee Chahal, founder/CEO of Sheroes and Mahila Money

May 2nd, 2022 32m 2s

Sairee is a serial entrepreneur and Founder/CEO or Sheroes. Sheroes is a social network with over 15M women. It helps empower them with a broad set of tools, community, jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities and financial services. It’s profitable

EP20: DeFi and Yield Farming deep dive, with Kedric Van de Carr, serial entrepreneur, DeFi investor and co-founder of DeFi Masterclass

Apr 19th, 2022 43m 52s

Kedric is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded and teaches the DeFi Masterclass, a hands-on workshop that has helped 100s onboard into the world of DeFi, learn how to research crypto opportunities, and make a passive income.Before DeFi mastercl

EP19: Building and scaling nationwide virtual primary care, with Sean Mehra, founder and CEO of HealthTap

Apr 6th, 2022 50m 59s

Sean is founder and CEO of HealthTap which makes primary care affordable and easy to access for all Americans. In this episode we discuss:HealthTap’s virtual primary care clinic Affordable solution for all Americans regardless of whether they h

EP18: Building customer obsessed products and culture, with Mari Baker, Silicon Valley veteran who was one of the first 30 employees and SVP at Intuit

Mar 22nd, 2022 1h 19m

Mari has held a variety of incredible roles in Silicon Valley as a product veteran, company builder, and now board member. Mari started her career in startups. She was one of the first 30 people at Intuit and helped grow the company grow over 1