Podcast Episodes

He bet his house on a startup—took 7 years to $1M, then hockey stick to $100M+ ARR. | Eldon Sprickerhoff, Co-Founder of eSentire

Season 4 Episode 74

Eldon put a $150K line of credit on his house to start eSentire in 2001. No VCs would touch him—they didn't understand services businesses. He worked 12-hour days, 7 days a week for 7 years to hit $1…

Published on 2 months, 1 week ago

He quit his job, went all-in on AI agents—then grew to 100K users & a $30M Series A in a year. | Soham Ganatra, Founder of Composio

Season 4 Episode 73

Soham spent 6 months building AI that would auto-generate integrations between any software. He locked down Glean as an early customer because he had friends there. And it failed completely.

So he piv…

Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago

TechCrunch called this YC founder a fraud at 18—then he built a $10M ARR fintech. | Sahil Phadnis, Founder of Affiniti

Season 4 Episode 72

Sahil was 18 when TechCrunch published a hit piece calling him a copycat. His co-founder Aaron was 16. They'd just raised $6 million from YC and top VCs for their crypto startup, then got subpoenaed …

Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago

Paul Graham Said His Startup Was Worthless—2 Months Later He Hit $1M ARR. | Jon Noronha, Co-Founder of Gamma

Season 4 Episode 71

Jon spent 3 years building Gamma with barely any traction—just a few hundred users after burning millions. Then ChatGPT dropped. In desperation, he pivoted to AI-powered presentations in March 2023 w…

Published on 2 months, 2 weeks ago

He quit Google, launched Rubrik—then grew to $1B ARR & a $16B market cap. | Soham Mazumdar, Co-Founder Rubrik & Wisdom AI

Season 4 Episode 70

Soham co-founded Rubrik by taking what he learned from building Google's data center tech to enterprises desperate for cloud migration. Two quarters later, he hit $1M ARR. And a few years later, a $1…

Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago

He Bootstrapped to $55M in Revenue—without ever having to hit 100% YoY growth. | Stéphan Donzé, Founder of AODocs

Season 4 Episode 69

Stéphan bootstrapped AODocs to $55M in revenue and 250 employees without taking a dime of VC money—while competing directly with venture-backed competitors. Starting as a services company in 2012, he…

Published on 2 months, 3 weeks ago

He Bootstrapped Wrike to $10M ARR—then exited for $2.2B. | Andrew Filev, Founder of Wrike & Zencoder

Season 4 Episode 68

Andrew bootstrapped Wrike and grew it from 0 to a $2.2B exit by doing the exact opposite of what every startup book tells you. No pivots. No talking to customers before launch. No narrow niche. Just …

Published on 2 months, 4 weeks ago

Q2 2025: The new Series A Bar is $3M ARR—& only 20% of seed startups make it. | Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta

Season 4 Episode 67

Peter Walker from Carta drops the hard data every founder needs. Based on actual cap table data from 1000s of startups, this Q2 update reveals the brutal new reality.

It takes 2+ years to go from seed…

Published on 3 months ago

His Video AI app hit $10M+ ARR in Months—with 0 outbound sales. | Michael Lingelbach, Founder of Hedra

Season 4 Episode 66

Hedra CEO Michael Lingelbach breaks down how his generative video app went from zero to millions of users and an eight-figure run rate in months — then deliberately slowed down to rebuild a V2 that e…

Published on 3 months ago

He grew to millions in ARR in 18 months—by fighting with his co-founders on purpose. | Ross McNairn, Co-Founder of Wordsmith AI.

Season 4 Episode 65

Ross went from lawyer to self-taught engineer to CTO at a 1,600-person unicorn—then quit to build Wordsmith AI. 

In 18 months, he's raised $30M and grown to mid-single-digit millions in ARR by doing e…

Published on 3 months, 1 week ago