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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

05:05

“Cultural fit” is a polite way to say “personal bias”

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/10/16

Today is my 55th birthday! I was planning to take the day off, but I started thinking about a few people my age who work in tech and have been recently laid off. Unlike workers in their 20s and 30s, they’re facing a very different set of pressures: family, college payments, aging parents, retirement, etc. Most of the ones I know are having a hard time landing interviews, let alone full-time jobs. This is the shortest episode I’ve ever released, so technically, I guess that makes this a hot take. I

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39:53

Shaping the future of work and care: Courtney...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/10/14

Based in New York, Elana Berkowitz and Courtney Leimkuhler are co-founders and partners at Springbank, where they focus on sectors that support working women and their families, largely in three key areas: the future of work, the care economy, and household consumer services. Their thesis is driven by growing demand from employers, insurers, and the government, recognizing the economic impact of caregiving, which includes fields like teaching, child care, nursing and home health care. “We look at

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37:34

Crafting influence: Early-stage PR strategies from...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/10/06

I interviewed Chikodi Chima, founder of Moonshot, a PR firm focused on early-stage startups. The discussion revolves around the art of storytelling, thought leadership, and how PR can exponentially boost brand presence and connect with media, along with prospective customers, employees and investors. Chikodi shares insights from his journey as a former tech journalist to a PR professional, emphasizing the importance of creating compelling narratives and strategic influence for startup founders

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51:15

From tech worker to tech founder: Lessons from Naveen...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/09/27

In 2014, Naveen Rao left his researcher job at Qualcomm to co-found machine intelligence platform Nervana. About two and a half years later, Nervana sold to Intel for more than $400 million.After a few years at Intel, Naveen became CEO and co-founder of open source startup MosaicML, which helped companies build and train large AI models more efficiently and affordably. Approximately two and a half years later, Databricks acquired that company for $1.3 billion and made him VP of Generative

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53:05

Unlocking growth-stage VC: Insights from CapitalG's...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/09/25

In July 2024, I visited the Ferry Building in San Francisco to sit down with CapitalG partners Jill (Greenberg) Chase and James Luo. As Alphabet’s growth-stage VC fund, CapitalG specializes in backing startups that have found product-market fit and are ready to scale with investments ranging from $50M to $200M. We talked about the key signals that indicate a company is ready for growth-stage investment, how CapitalG leverages Google and Alphabet resources to boost its portfolio, and their

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01:03:59

How Dovetail CEO Benjamin Humphrey scaled an...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/09/16

In this episode, Fund/Build/Scale host Walter Thompson interviews Benjamin Humphrey, CEO and co-founder of Dovetail, a customer insights hub based in Sydney, Australia. They discuss the challenges of hiring for a bootstrapped company, early customer acquisition strategies, and the impact of local networking when starting up far from major tech hubs like Silicon Valley. Benjamin shares his journey from being a lead designer at Atlassian to founding Dovetail, emphasizing the importance of building

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43:46

Startup PR 101: Essential tips from SISU founder...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/09/13

Jenna Birch is the founder of SISU, a PR firm that serves early-stage startups and VCs. She’s also a partner at Kaya Ventures. We talked about how to recognize when it’s time to engage PR services, the importance of a founder’s personal branding and the path that led her from journalism into venture-backed tech. She also shared her methodologies for assessing clients, setting realistic expectations, and creating impactful media strategies. There are a lot of misconceptions around PR and comms, so I

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42:21

Navigating the coming Series A crunch with Point72...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/09/12

Before Sri Chandrasekar became managing partner at Point72 Ventures, he was a Senior Vice President at In-Q-Tel, the non-profit VC firm that invests in startups on behalf of the CIA and other national intelligence agencies. That work cultivated his interest in AI and ML a decade ago, which led hedge fund Point72 to recruit him to join its then-new venture arm in 2017. Fast-forward to 2024, Sri takes around 300 first-call meetings with founders each year. While we had an extended discussion about his

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25:39

Using an AI co-pilot to kickstart your business with...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/09/05

Nicholas Thorne is a partner at prehype, a venture development firm that helps large companies create startups by acting as an incubator. He's also the founder of Audos, an AI co-pilot designed to assist entrepreneurs in conducting customer interviews, creating slide decks, and potentially investing in their ideas. According to Nicholas, Audos can even write code and identify freelancers, functioning as a virtual technical product manager. I interviewed him to explore how this co-pilot supports

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31:56

Allie Garfinkle of Fortune's “Term Sheet” talks...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/08/28

I met Fortune Senior Finance Reporter Allie Garfinkle in February 2024 at an event for comms professionals. She had just taken over the Term Sheet daily deals newsletter covering startups, venture capital, M&A, trends and pretty much anything tech-related. When news broke right after our panel that Reddit was filing to go public, she didn’t have a desk or a chair, so she grabbed her laptop, sat on the floor with her back to the wall and began drafting her next column. She wasn’t stressed out —

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42:55

Lessons for early-stage AI founders from Pyron CEO...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/08/26

Before Igor Jablokov was CEO and founder of Pryon, he worked with Apple on a prototype of Siri. He also founded a speech recognition company that Amazon acquired to develop its Alexa AI and Echo devices.He joined me on the podcast to talk about the evolution and challenges of building AI technologies and companies, different phases of startup growth, and how AI is transforming enterprise software procurement. Igor also offered his insights on the current AI hype cycle, explained the concept of

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43:31

TDK Ventures President Nicolas Sauvage on building...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/08/25

If you're building a first-to-market solution using emerging technology that could meaningfully contribute to society and generate a 50x return, TDK Ventures President Nicolas Sauvage wants to hear from you.I invited him on the podcast to learn about TDK Ventures’ approach to corporate VC, which uses backcasting to identify ideal future technologies and then invest in entrepreneurs who are working towards those goals. Portfolio companies include startups that make things like flying taxis,

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36:23

Entrepreneurial insights for tech workers +...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/08/22

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, host Walter Thompson engages in a comprehensive discussion with Hantz Févry, co-founder and CEO of Stoovo, an AI-based geospatial data company. Hantz shares invaluable insights into separating one's identity from their job, the importance of rapid execution in startups, and the journey from working at Google to launching his own company. This episode targets tech workers aspiring to start their own businesses and immigrants in the U.S. on worker visas,

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44:44

Understanding product-led growth with Laura Schaffer,...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/08/04

Enterprise companies like Salesforce, Oracle and Cisco use sales-led growth to drive revenue and build relationships with potential customers.Early-stage startups can't afford to rely on traditional sales and marketing, which is where product-led growth (PLG) comes in. Instead of creating slick sales collateral and hiring aggressive go-getters, PLG presents the product itself as the primary driver for customer acquisition, expansion and conversion. "It's an end-user-based revenue motion," said

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42:12

Addressing pain points + exploring early-stage trends...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/08/04

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I interviewed Amex Ventures Managing Director Kevin Weber about some of the nuances between traditional VC and corporate venture capital. It’s quite a mix: he’s looking for founders who can create value for individual American Express cardholders and the firm itself, so we talked about what types of opportunities he’s looking for, some of the problems he’s trying to solve, and the role risk plays in pushing organizational boundaries. “In many cases, I actually

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29:43

SnapLogic CTO Jeremiah Stone on overcoming AI...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/07/29

Everyone's looking for ways to implement AI solutions, but integrating them into existing systems means entering uncharted territory. Despite the hype cycle, a majority of enterprise customers “are spending 70-80% of their capacity maintaining legacy application infrastructure,” said Jeremiah Stone, CTO of SnapLogic. As a result, these companies often lack the necessary talent to effectively assess or integrate AI, making compliance and security the two biggest challenges for AI-first

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38:28

S2 E5: From the ground up: Building startups with Deb...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/07/22

Deb Kemper is a managing partner of Golden Seeds Ventures, a firm that focuses on backing early-stage, women-led companies.She joined me on the podcast to share tactics with founders who want to build networks with investors outside of Silicon Valley and discuss some of the challenges facing anyone seeking follow-on funding these days. We also talked about the criteria investors use to gauge the strengths of teams and their ideas. “I know some investor groups do full-on psychological assessments

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21:46

S2 E4: VAST Data CEO/founder Renen Hallak: “When we...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/07/20

One of the first interviews I did for the podcast was with Renen Hallak, CEO and founder of AI infrastructure company VAST Data. The company launched in 2019, and three years later, it was ranked No. 5 on the Deloitte Technology Fast 500™. Today, its customer base includes massive organizations like Disney, Verizon, the US Air Force and the US Department of Energy. It’s one of the fastest-growing companies in its sector. You can probably tell I was a little nervous. Most of the questions I asked

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24:21

S2E3: Felicis' Viviana Faga on early-stage AI brand...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/07/13

Viviana Faga is general partner at Felicis, a venture firm that invests in seed to Series B startups in several sectors. Since its founding in 2006, the company has backed breakout companies like Adyen, Canva, Shopify and Runway. Because she’s a former operator with experience in positioning, branding and go-to-market strategy, I asked her to come on Fund/Build/Scale to talk about how she evaluates seed-stage AI investments and share some of the tactics she’s using to help founders “really focus on

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52:08

S2E2: Capital-efficient growth and discovering...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/07/11

Fiat Ventures General Partner and co-founder Drew Glover fits the textbook definition of an emerging investor, but we had so much to talk about, the term itself never came up during our interview. Founded in 2022, Fiat Ventures is nearing the end of its $25M Fund One, which has focused on seed-stage fintech startups. “Seed is really the space that's optimized to our process, which is to work with them prior to investment,” said Drew. In addition to Fiat Ventures, he also co-founded full-stack

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