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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

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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41:31

S2 E1: Inside Intel Ignite with VP & GM Tzahi Weisfeld

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/07/09

Early-stage deep tech founders working in AI and ML, or sectors like mobility, robotics and semiconductors are generally better off raising funds, seeking mentorship and connecting with potential customers via investors who aren’t expecting rapid growth and expansion. Because corporate VC looks for strategic plays that can accelerate their companies’ tech adoption and expand access to markets, they’re often more in alignment with deep tech startups. They also cast a wider net — while Y Combinator

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01:52

Fund/Build/Scale season 2: Why I'm doing this podcast...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/06/27

I’m Walter Thompson. After working for years in early-stage startups and as a journalist, here are three hard truths I’ve learned:Success in Silicon Valley hinges on connections, hard work and luck. Startups often fail because founders lack fundamental business knowledge. 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, you

en

01:16:50

Episode 10 | Two repeat founders share long-term...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/06/17

The average failure rate for a tech startup is 90%. Around one-fifth will flame out in the first year, and the overwhelming majority of the ones that make it past that mark will never be acquired or go public. It’s brutal. It takes years to build a sustainable technology company, and considering how unbalanced the risk/reward ratio is, each founder needs to craft personalized mental and emotional frameworks that suit their needs. Because there’s no single recipe for long-term success, I was glad to

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47:41

Episode 9 | Taking an AI startup from research to...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/06/06

For this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I interviewed Dipanwita Das, CEO and co-founder of Sorcero, about the journey of taking an AI startup from research to reality. She shared her experience of interviewing more than 300 people to shape Sorcero's product and technical requirements, as well as strategies for aligning customer needs with product development. We also discussed the challenges of building a capable team, fundraising, and the process she and her co-founders used to transform their thesis

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35:26

Episode 8 | Securiti CEO Rehan Jalil on scaling to...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/05/14

Going from zero to $1M in annual recurring revenue is worth celebrating, but it’s no guarantee that your startup is on a path to success. How long did it take to reach this milestone? How much did you spend to acquire each customer, and how many have renewed or extended their contracts? When it comes to sales, repeatability equals success. To learn more about the tactics startups use to reach $1 million ARR (and beyond) I interviewed Rehan Jalil, CEO of Securiti. Drawing from his experience as a

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01:00:01

Episode 7 | Communicating your vision with May Habib...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/05/01

Successful entrepreneurs must translate their personal visions into something tangible enough to attract employees, investors, and eventually, customers. There are best practices for product management and software pricing, but how do you make yourself persuasive (and authentic) enough to convince someone else to risk their time and money on your idea? I interviewed May Habib (CEO and co-founder, Writer) and Gaurav Misra (CEO and co-founder, Captions) to learn how they use a mix of hard and soft

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21:10

Fund/Build/Scale mini-episode | From seed stage to...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/04/22

In part two, Armon explained why he initially resisted investor advice to raise a Series A and spoke frankly about the challenges involved with stepping up into a leadership role, which led to some interesting talk about overcoming impostor syndrome, something a lot of us can relate to. Part 2: show Series A investors market opportunities you've already validated [1:51] focusing on enterprise sales from the beginning was a winning strategy [3:40] "we had an enterprise sales option straight from the

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20:45

Fund/Build/Scale mini-episode | From seed stage to...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/04/22

I interviewed Coalesce CEO and co-founder Armon Petrossian in February 2024 to talk about his company's journey from seed stage to Series A. I had no idea he was already working on his next round: just a few weeks after we recorded this interview, Coalesce announced a $50M Series B. To help me prepare, his team shared their slightly redacted Series A pitch deck, which was immensely helpful. I'd intended to make this a mini-episode, but there was so much here, I decided to break it up into two

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29:21

Episode 6 | AI compliance and regulation with Laura...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/04/16

I interviewed Laura Bisesto (global head of policy and privacy at Nextdoor) in January 2024 to get her advice for AI startups that are just starting out. We talked about compliance, how to recognize when you need in-house help, and the overall importance of planning for worst case scenarios. She also had some thoughts for rolling out new AI-powered features, creating user advisory boards, and navigating a patchwork of state, federal and international laws. Here’s a breakdown of our

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38:41

Episode 5 | Breaking into enterprise sales with Maria...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/04/03

For episode 5, I interviewed Maria Latushkin, GVP of Technology and Engineering at Albertsons, the second-largest grocery chain in America, and Jack Berkowitz, Chief Data Officer at Securiti (previously with ADP), to get their insider's perspective on how enterprise-level customers buy software and services from AI startups.The most surprising thing I learned came early in the chat: spinning up a pilot program or a partnership creates tangible risks for enterprise customers, which means they can

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39:38

Episode 4 | Fundraising from both sides of the table...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/03/19

Jorge Torres (CEO, co-founder, MindsDB) and Vijay Reddy (AI Start investor, Mayfield) were the first two people I interviewed for Fund/Build/Scale. We met up at Jorge's office in San Francisco's Mission District on a rainy Friday afternoon in November 2023. We spent time discussing the ins and outs of pitch tactics and investor outreach, but we also talked about the criteria VCs use to evaluate zero-day investments, which red flags investors and founders both need to look out for, and how to find

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34:54

Episode 3 | Tapping into the AI Developer Community...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/03/05

I wanted to learn more about how inception-stage AI founders can tap into developer ecosystems, so I spoke to Ozzy Johnson, Director of Solutions Engineering for NVIDIA Developer Programs.In his role, he leads a global product team that accelerates its own work by interacting with outside developers who use the company’s technology. Johnson also works with NVIDIA’s Inception program, a virtual accelerator for AI and deep-learning startups. “It's kind of necessary to know the shape of the world to

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40:51

Episode 2 | Digging Your Moat: Customer Discovery +...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/02/21

Idea-stage investors are still excited about AI, but the savvier ones are looking for social proof and tangible takeaways from the customer discovery process. Before they commit, these investors are seeking evidence that the idea/team they’re considering won’t melt like snow in the rain the next time a major player improves their model.With that in mind, I interviewed Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of SambaNova Systems, for Episode 2. Launched in 2017, SambaNova raised more than a billion

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46:46

Episode 1 | Building Trust with Your Inception...

Fund/Build/Scale ·

2024/02/07

In the first episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha spoke about the need for founders to identify investors they can trust, how to pitch Mayfield's AI Start seed fund, and why he’s specifically looking for inception-stage entrepreneurs who have “half-baked” ideas. Our conversation covered a lot of ground: Navin described the elements of a fundable idea, shared what excites (and unnerves) him about AI investing, and offered a framework for founder teams seeking solutions

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