After graduating college, co-founders Amar Shah and Sonia Nigam were bored with at their first ”real jobs” so through trial and error they came up with the idea to develop an API that processes donations called Change. They talk with Darrell and Jordan about getting their first customers by literally knocking on shop doors, growing the company while maintaining the close-knit culture, and why incorporating crypto payments was a key part of their growth. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories fr...
Sep 20, 2022•47 min•Ep. 79
We spoke to Figma founder and CEO Dylan Field earlier this year, and while we didn’t know at the time that the startup would be entering into a deal to be acquired by Adobe for north of $20 billion, the lessons that Field shared around his journey building Figma and bringing on the right investors are definitely extra resonant now that the acquisition has been announced. Please enjoy this ‘greatest hit’ in light of the news! If you love live conversations with founders, you'll love TechCrunch Di...
Sep 15, 2022•50 min•Ep. 78
We talk to a lot of healthtech founders on this show because there are countless ways the healthcare system, particularly in the US, needs to be disrupted. This week, we talked to Kelsey Mellard who founded Sitka with the goal of implementing value-based care and helping primary care physicians make more thoughtful referrals to specialists. She talks with Darrell and Jordan about playing the long game to change how people receive care in the US and incentivize providers to give high-quality care...
Sep 13, 2022•54 min•Ep. 77
This week on Found Live Darrell and special guest host, Anita Ramaswamy, talk to Christine Quinn who you probably know from Selling Sunset and her husband Christian Dumontet about their new company RealOpen. The couple talks about why buying a home using crypto is the real estate of the future, how to balance being co-founders, and parents, and maintain their relationship, and yes Christine talks a bit about her time on Selling Sunset. To hear more from Anita, listen to TechCrunch's Chain Reacti...
Sep 06, 2022•39 min•Ep. 76
In this mini-sode we catch up with one of the first founders we spoke to, Hana Mohan from MagicBell. Since we talked to Hana last, MagicBell’s business and team have grown and she talks to our producer Maggie about landing their first enterprise client, the importance of staying in touch with other YC founders and maintaining that community, and how she is continually re-learning the challenges of managing a growing team. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect w...
Sep 02, 2022•13 min•Ep. 75
This week’s guest Shiv Rao founded Abridge after experiencing how unnerving it can be to go through a medical emergency with a loved one—even for a practicing doctor like him. So he and the Abridge team created an app that doesn’t just transcribe a conversation between doctor and patient but can summarize the important parts, pull out the next steps, and even define any medical terms that were said so the patient walks away with all the information they need. The same technology helps doctors ta...
Aug 30, 2022•47 min•Ep. 74
Super Troopers premiered at Sundance to a receptive, giggling crowd but if you judged it based on its Rotten Tomato score and reviews, you’d think it flopped. Writer, director, comedian, and recent founder Jay Chandrasekhar never felt right about the critiques from random strangers online. So he set about creating Vouch Vault, an app in which friends can recommend media, restaurants, and products to each other and users can trust those reviews because they’re coming from people with similar tast...
Aug 23, 2022•41 min•Ep. 73
Darrell and Jordan joined the Equity crew to try to answer the questions: Despite all the dollars and deals out there, does a drop in activation energy change how many entrepreneurs we'll see in the early-stage market? Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect with us: On Twitter On Instagram Via email: found@techcrunch.com Call us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618 Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be...
Aug 16, 2022•32 min•Ep. 72
We all have a right to clean air but chances are you aren’t getting accurate air quality data—Davida Herzl the co-founder and CEO of Aclima is looking to change that. In this episode, she talks with Jordan and Darrell about the struggles she faced trying to start a climate company right after the clean tech bubble burst, how she’s stayed laser-focused on her mission, and how working with state governments is paramount for her company and measuring air-quality at scale. Subscribe to Found to hear...
Aug 09, 2022•46 min•Ep. 71
Comics are the foundation for so many movies, TV shows, and video games however creators still struggle to be fairly compensated for their material. Chris Giliberti founded Zestworld, a creator-centered platform that offers solutions for the artist to publish their work, manage commissioned artwork, and own their IP and licensing. In this episode Chris and Darrell nerd out about upcoming projects, the best ways to monetize digital custom art, and building a community online that feels like walki...
Aug 02, 2022•42 min•Ep. 70
Welcome to the first bonus episode of Found. In this mini-sode we catch up with the very first founder we had on, Iman Abuzeid from Incredible Health. Since we talked to Iman last, Incredible Health has experienced rapid growth and she talks to our producer Maggie about learning to scale after you’ve reached market fit and how they're using proprietary data to improve their product for the next generation of nurses. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect with us...
Jul 28, 2022•14 min•Ep. 69
Nikki Pechet and her co-founder started Homebound after a wildfire ripped through Northern California and thousands of people were put on years-long waiting lists to build their homes to make building a home simpler. On this episode, she talks with Darrell and Jordan about creating an online flow that makes buying a home almost too easy, how her experience at Thumbtack helped her think through the labor logistics, and why she isn’t nervous about the impending economic downturn. Subscribe to Foun...
Jul 26, 2022•54 min•Ep. 68
On this episode of Found Live, Chief co-founder and CEO, Carolyn Childers, joins us to talk about leading a company that is focused on good leadership. AftAfter a transformative experience with another woman business leader who is now her co-founder, Carolyn wanted to create a product that would connect women at the VP and c-suite level with the kind of excellent mentorship she experienced while providing virtual and in-person spaces to develop community. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories ...
Jul 19, 2022•41 min•Ep. 67
Bowery Farms founder and CEO Irving Fain wants you to taste the best strawberry you’ve ever had, grown only a few miles from your urban home. As the leading and largest vertical farming company in the U.S, their goal is to make agriculture possible in urban spaces while also making it possible to grow a wide array of crops from anywhere in the world. Darrell and Jordan talk to him about how agtech companies all have a space in the fight against climate change, what led him to founding Bowery, an...
Jul 12, 2022•47 min•Ep. 66
It’s rare we get to speak to someone who has been working at their company for 19 years so this conversation with Matt Mullenweg of Automattic and WordPress feels a little special. His journey to becoming a founder was grounded in a love for blogging and working on open source projects. Now WordPress is pretty much ubiquitous in the digital publishing world. He talks with Darrell and Jordan about how much different fundraising worked for him, how he has remained such an in-touch leader, and of c...
Jul 05, 2022•47 min•Ep. 65
Christine Tao knows good leaders have good executive coaches. She founded Sounding Board to make it easier for companies to manage, scale, and measure leadership coaching on one unified platform. This week, she talks to Darrell and Jordan about difficulties she and her co-founder faced while fundraising and how they established the customer type that made scaling possible. Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND. Connect with us: On Twitter On In...
Jun 28, 2022•46 min•Ep. 64
Anja Health CEO and founder, Kathryn Cross, knows all too well that banking cord blood stem cells can be life. Anja Health’s mission is to make storing stem cells accessible to everyone– regardless of race, socioeconomic status, or income and she’s getting her message out in an unlikely space. The 23-year-old TikTok influencer turned founder is a staunch believer in the power of marketing on social media. In this episode, she walks Darrell and Jordan through how the different social channels can...
Jun 21, 2022•43 min•Ep. 63
This week we talk to two founders who just came off stage from the TC Sessions: Mobility Pitch-Off. First up we have Eloa Guillotin the co-founder and CEO of Beyond Aero which is making long-range electric aircraft possible by using hydrogen-electric propulsion. Followed by Jim Gibbs, the co-founder and CEO of Meter Feeder which is on a mission to provide a low-cost payment and enforcement solution for small to mid-sized governments for parking through an API. The winner of the pitch-off won the...
Jun 14, 2022•33 min•Ep. 62
Landed founder and CEO Vivian Wang is on a mission to connect blue-collar workers with high-quality job opportunities. Landed handles the hiring process from recruiting to vetting to setting up interviews and facilitating a feedback loop for the general managers to make their workplaces more desirable. They’re also improving employees' financial well-being by helping them upscale once they’ve landed the job. In the episode, Vivian talks about how COVID showed us all how essential blue-collar wor...
Jun 07, 2022•50 min•Ep. 61
Claire Coder, founder and CEO of Aunt Flow joined us on Found Live. Darrell, Jordan, and Claire got into how she landed on a B2B model for Aunt Flow and the importance of free, accessible period products-- which is something she often has to educate prospective investors or customers on. Claire also opened up about how she has grown as a leader, learned to listen to feedback from her team, and improve the culture at Aunt Flow. And don't forget to hear from more founders from Columbus, Ohio tun i...
May 31, 2022•49 min•Ep. 60
Happy one year of Found! To celebrate our anniversary, we welcomed back four founders whose stories really stuck with us since we talked to them. In what Jordan called a “founder smoothie”, we talked with Brie Code from TRU LUV who was on our second episode, Earl Cole from SMART Tire Company who was on the following episode, as well as Aditi Shekar from Zeta, and Jelani Memory from A Kids Company About who joined us a few months later. They talk about perspective shifts they’ve experienced in th...
May 27, 2022•46 min•Ep. 59
Alchemy co-founders Nikil Viswanathan and Joe Lau were persistent in their search for the right startup idea. The duo that an investor once compared to cockroaches for their ability to survive , talk to Jordan and Darrell about building such a trusting founder relationship, staying ahead of their competition by working closely with their customers – Web3 designers, and how they’ve managed to more or less leave their venture capital dollars in the bank. Take our listener survey and let us know a ...
May 24, 2022•53 min•Ep. 58
Justin Intal from Forage joined the Found crew live. He talks about how profound struggles in her personal life motivated him to create a way for online grocers to accept EBT and SNAP benefits. He also talked about the importance of vulnerability and transparency as a CEO. Each failure is learning, so he is not about hiding his past failed companies or ideas–in fact he has them written out on his Linkedin. Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND....
May 17, 2022•49 min•Ep. 57
Sassie Duggleby is leading the team at Venus Aerospace to develop a spaceplane that could go from LA to Tokyo in an hour. As CEO, Sassie sets the tone that her team doesn’t have to adhere to the typical startup-up grind to solve some serious deeptech issues. She talks with Darrell and Jordan about honoring the company’s namesake–Venus, the goddess of love–and loving her customers and her employees well, all while working to bring the world closer together with greener, more efficient travel. Tak...
May 10, 2022•49 min•Ep. 56
Thor Fridriksson is, as Jordan calls him, the kind of mobile gaming. With mega-viral games like Trivia Royale and QuizUp, he knows the secret sauce to making a popular game, but the code he hasn’t cracked is how to make a super lucrative game. Thor joined us on Found Live to talk about the pitfalls of ads on mobile games, why the experience of playing will always be his number one priority, and what he has cooking with his next company Rocky Road Inc. Take our listener survey and let us know a b...
May 03, 2022•49 min•Ep. 55
ChowNow started as a way for founder and CEO, Chris Webb and his friends to easily order from smaller local restaurants but 8 years later when COVID hit ChowNow became known as a restaurant-friendly alternative to some of the larger players in the space. They began ranking in the app store organically and getting a boost in users and customers. Chris talks with Darrell and Jordan about the” fast and steady” approach to building a lasting company and how to seize a moment when growth occurs. Take...
Apr 26, 2022•52 min•Ep. 54
Found has been nominated for a Webby! Tomorrow is the last day to vote, so help us win by going to bit.ly/vote4found. Found posts every Tuesday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcast: Equity . Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each Connect with us: On Twitter On Instagram Via email: found@techcrunch.com
Apr 20, 2022•34 sec•Ep. 53
Help us Win a Webby by voting for us here: bit.ly/vote4found Today on Found we talk to Anthony DiMare, the co-founder and CEO of Bedrock, a company which has developed autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) to survey and map the seafloor in a much more efficient and affordable way than the traditional “big ship with a big sonar” method.Darrell, Jordan, and Anthony get into why seafloor exploration could be the answer to many problems on land like finding space to build offshore wind farms and how...
Apr 19, 2022•52 min•Ep. 51
Dylan Field, co-founder and CEO of Figma, started the company when he was 20 years old when he had no idea if anyone would see the value in making design a multiplayer game let alone that his company become the Google Docs of design. He chats with Darrell and Jordan about how his leadership style has evolved, how he handles the changing company culture as Figma grows, and how the nature of design has rapidly changed into the collaborative work it is now. Take our listener survey and let us know ...
Apr 12, 2022•50 min•Ep. 52
Everly Health founder and CEO Julia Cheek is taking steps to revolutionize healthcare by helping patients gain access to all kinds of medical testing and in doing so allowing providers to have the data they need to give the best care possible. Darrell and Jordan first met Julia at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2016 when she was a self-proclaimed “fish out of water”. On today’s episode, she talks about how she went from being a fresh first-time founder to a CEO and competent leader who has strategically ...
Apr 04, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 50
