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PODCAST

Fund/Build/Scale

Walter Thompson

After working for years in early-stage startups and as a journalist, here are three hard truths I’ve learned: 1. Success in Silicon Valley hinges on connections, hard work and luck. 2. Startups often fail because founders lack fundamental business knowledge. 3. Real, actionable advice comes from those who’ve actually done it. There’s no such thing as “founder DNA.” If you’re willing to take on risk and invest years of your life in something that has maybe a 10% chance of paying off — less if

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All Episodes

41:54

What Your CEO Won't Tell You About Your Stock Options

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/03/07

When you accepted the offer, maybe you imagined being in the group photo when your boss rang the bell at NASDAQ.But five years later, your company just raised its Series C, and an IPO isn’t on the horizon. Meanwhile, you need liquidity — whether it’s for a down payment on a house, starting a family, or another major life event. The stock options you’ve earned are fully vested, but they’re just sitting there. So how do you turn them into cash? If your company allows it, you can sell your shares to

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31:28

Why PR Comes Before PMF

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/02/26

Do you want to know the difference between marketing and PR?Marketing is when you say something nice about yourself; PR is when other people say nice things about you. Jenna Guarneri is the founder of JMG Public Relations and author of the bestseller "You Need PR." In this episode, she shares DIY PR tactics that help founders establish themselves as experts, attract customers, and raise their profile with investors — without spending a fortune on an agency. If you’ve ever wondered why reporters

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46:19

Investor Insights for African Startups with Capria...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/02/15

Building a startup in Africa isn’t the same as doing it in Silicon Valley.Some challenges overlap, but many don’t, like currency volatility, limited early-stage funding, and investors who expect you to scale faster than the market allows. So how do you grow beyond your home market? How do you raise funds when VC is scarce? And what do African founders need to do to make their startups more venture-backable? To find out, I spoke with Mobola da-Silva, a partner at Capria Ventures who’s based in

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40:20

KarmaCheck CEO Eric Ly on Customer Discovery + Early...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/02/12

Eric Ly is the CEO of KarmaCheck, where he’s tackling a problem he first noticed years ago as a co-founder of LinkedIn: People don’t always tell the truth about themselves. To address this, KarmaCheck — launched in 2019 — automates key aspects of the background check process. By reducing complexity, employers can speed up hiring, while job applicants experience less friction along the way. “This is one of the first touch points with the employer: experiencing pain and frustration having to go

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37:37

Inside Acceldata: CEO Rohit Choudhary on Building a...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/02/03

Most early-stage founders I talk to are focused on getting their first customers, hiring their first employees, or maybe, if they’re lucky, closing their first round of funding. But what happens after that?For Rohit Choudhary, the answer was building a whole new category. Rohit is the CEO and co-founder of Acceldata, a data observability platform that helps companies manage the complexity of modern data infrastructure. Before starting the company, he spent years inside the problem — working on data

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44:36

Vouch CEO Sam Hodges on Mitigating Startup Risk and...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/02/01

Startups face unexpected risks every day — cyberattacks, lawsuits, market shifts —but many entrepreneurs don’t think about risk management until it’s too late.In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Vouch co-founder/CEO Sam Hodges explains why risk management should be top of mind for early-stage founders. We discuss: Why risk management matters for early-stage startups How Vouch validated, built, and launched Corix as a new business unit The biggest mistakes founders make when managing

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52:43

Navigating Blue Oceans: Key Insights for Emerging...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/01/23

Amr Awadallah is the CEO and co-founder of Vectara. Previously, he co-founded Cloudera, which went public in 2017 and was acquired for $5.3 billion, and also served as VP of Developer Relations at Google Cloud. His first startup, Aptivia, was acquired by Yahoo, where he later became VP of Product Intelligence Engineering.I talked to him about his experience as an immigrant in Silicon Valley, the frameworks he’s built to articulate vision and credibility, and what he’s learned about pitching

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44:15

2025 Cybersecurity Trends, Insights and Storytelling...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/01/09

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I talked with YL Ventures Partner Andy Ellis (a former CISO) about his approach to storytelling, tactics for founder-led sales and marketing, and why he thinks the cybersecurity hiring challenge isn’t a talent shortage, but a market misunderstanding. We also discussed refining product-market fit, customer discovery methods and pitfalls like believing in one's own narrative too strongly. The conversation also touched on hiring strategies, managing design

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48:14

Lessons from Operant AI's Startup Journey: “ We're...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2025/01/03

Two of the three co-founders of Operant AI — CTO Dr. Priyanka Tembey and CMO Ashley Roof — joined me to talk about building the first runtime application protection platform and navigating the challenges of cloud-native security. The company announced a $10M Series A in September 2024 — In October, we discussed taking the leap into entrepreneurship, the lessons they learned through customer discovery and education, making early hires count, and the importance of early-stage team dynamics.RUNTIME:

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44:44

Mercury Raise 2024 Survey: Founder Challenges,...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/12/19

Startups are built on grit, vision, and — surprisingly — a lot of peer advice. In this episode, I sat down with Mallory Contois, Head of Community at Mercury and leader of Mercury Raise, their founder success platform. Drawing from their latest survey, Mallory shares eye-opening insights about how early-stage entrepreneurs navigate challenges like fundraising, hiring, and customer acquisition. Why do founders rely more on peer networks and podcasts like this one than their VCs for operational

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42:09

Rusty Ralston and Jay Patil of Swell VC: A Hands-on...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/12/17

In October 2024, New York-based Swell VC announced its second fund with $11.5 million in commitments. Co-founded by general partners Jay Patil and Rusty Ralston in 2011, the firm now manages two seed-stage funds and a special purpose vehicle with $19 million in assets. Compared to larger firms, they’re small potatoes — but that’s intentional. Swell VC is all about being hands-on: helping founders with critical early hires and go-to-market strategies. I invited them on Fund/Build/Scale to discuss

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33:24

Seed-stage Valuation Insights from Lightspeed's...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/12/15

If a team hasn’t built a minimum viable product, secured paying customers, or demonstrated strong unit economics, what exactly are seed-stage investors betting on?To get some answers, I sat down with Nnamdi Iregbulem, a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, to discuss what drives seed valuations, the traits of successful founders, and his perspective on AI startups. “A lot of the pitches that I get are basically two people, a PowerPoint deck, and their dog,” Nnamdi told me during our conversation

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27:21

Dan DeGolier: How Fractional CFOs Become a CEO's...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/12/09

In the startups I worked at, we never had spare laptops. When we hired someone, we’d order their laptop that day. That’s Startup Cashflow 101: don’t spend money until you have to. The same principle applies to your leadership team. Hiring a CMO before product-market fit? Too soon. And a CEO can handle COO duties for a while. Most seed-stage companies don’t need a full-time CFO either. A good controller can handle day-to-day finances, while a fractional CFO can plan future fundraising and create

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45:44

MaC Venture Capital’s Marlon Nichols Offers...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/12/05

When I learned that MaC Venture Capital just raised $150 million for its third fund since 2020, I immediately reached out for an interview with Marlon Nichols, the firm’s co-founder and managing general partner.Marlon previously co-founded Cross Culture Ventures, which merged with M Ventures in 2019 to form MaC VC. In this interview, we talked about his path from enterprise software into venture capital, the concept of cultural investing, and MaC VC’s focus on diverse founders. He also explained

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33:04

From PhD to CEO: Sahil Agarwal of Enkrypt AI Shares...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/12/04

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, host Walter Thompson interviews Sahil Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of Encrypt AI. Sahil shares his journey from academia to leading an international AI company, discussing the importance of storytelling, confidence, and addressing biases within AI models. He also delves into challenges faced by immigrant entrepreneurs and the balance between leadership and employee well-being. Sahil provides insights into navigating enterprise AI security, fundraising strategies,

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44:10

Transforming Practical Wisdom into Iconic Brands with...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/11/22

Branding is a condensed form of storytelling.That’s my opinion, but it’s also shared by David Placek, founder and president of Lexicon Branding. Here are a few of the companies and products they’ve named since 1982: Subaru Outback, Subaru Forester BlackBerry Pentium PowerBook Nissan Rogue Lucid Azure Sonos Swiffer NVIDIA Shield Febreze In May 2024, I interviewed him at his headquarters in Sausalito, California about brand architecture and positioning, the merits of being bold and authentic, and

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56:15

From concept to Series A: How Inversion got its...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/11/20

Deeptech founders are solving problems that most of us don’t think of as problems and tackling challenges that push the boundaries of what we think is possible. This interview with Justin Fiaschetti, CEO and co-founder of Inversion, is a good example. Inversion is building a platform that will enable space-based cargo delivery using autonomous re-entry vehicles with parachutes that will let them deliver goods from space to pretty much anywhere on Earth in less than 60 minutes within 20 feet of their

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24:58

How to run a board meeting in 60 minutes

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/10/28

If you want a healthy relationship, it’s essential to set clear expectations and boundaries from the start. The same holds true for a founder and their board. Despite the power dynamics, CEOs can still create a transparent communication framework that respects everyone’s limited time. In part two of my interview with TigerEye co-founder and CEO Tracy Young, we discuss her approach to work-life balance, the unique challenges women founders face while fundraising, how to run a board meeting in 60

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23:09

Starting up in stealth: A conversation with TigerEye...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/10/27

In 2011, Tracy Young co-founded PlanGrid, which made software for construction teams. After scaling the company to 450 people and raising $69 million, it was acquired by Autodesk in 2018 for $875 million. That’s a win, but Tracy and her partners didn’t go for the exit because they’d reached the peak of the mountain. They cut the deal because PlanGrid was behind in the market, and they didn’t know how to catch up. Three years later, during the pandemic, Tracy and her husband, Ralph Gootee, co-founded

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45:01

“Talent has no ZIP code:” Laura González-Estéfani on...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/10/19

Most of the world’s talent goes untapped. Unrecognized.With that in mind, I interviewed Laura González-Estéfani, founder of Miami-based VC firm TheVentureCity in May 2024. We talked about the potential of global talent and why more investors need to broaden their scope beyond major tech hubs. This episode provides valuable insights for founders who don’t have large networks or a business background. She offered practical advice on navigating the VC approval process, building trust with investors,

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