Launching an e-commerce startup in the grocery space is no small task. On today’s episode Becca and Dom are joined by Abhi Ramesh, the CEO and founder of Misfits Market, a grocery startup that sells surplus and unwanted produce directly to consumers who don’t mind funny-looking foods. They talk about how he started the company in his apartment handling every aspect from personally buying the unwanted produce from the farms, to storing the food, to packaging and shipping, all while running the we...
Oct 31, 2023•42 min•Ep. 137
Welcome back to Found, TechCrunch’s podcast that brings you the stories behind the startups. This week our hosts Becca Szkutak and Dom-Madori Davis talk with Jonas Torland from 7Analytics, a Norwegian company that has built a data platform that powers tools and products for sustainable risk management. Their models predict the water paths of floods which allow them to predict and map the damage. They got into: How to balance responsibilities between four founders The difference between mitigatio...
Oct 24, 2023•42 min•Ep. 136
This week we’re bringing you a conversation with Hilary Mason from Hidden Door, an AI-driven narrative game engine. This mini-episode recorded in person at TechCrunch Disrupt and Dom and Hilary get into how generative AI is changing online gaming, building a team of creatives, and fundraising in the gaming space. Found posts every Friday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted when new episodes drop. Check out the other TechCrunch podcasts: Equity, and Chain...
Oct 17, 2023•15 min•Ep. 135
This week’s episode features a conversation with Giovanni Fili, the founder and CEO of Exeger, a startup that creates flexible solar cells that can create electric energy off of any light condition. Fili talked about what it has been like devoting the last 15 years of his career to a company based on tech that hadn’t previously been proven to work. He talked about running a deep tech company as a non-technical founder and how he’s built a capital-intensive startup off of relatively little fundin...
Oct 10, 2023•43 min•Ep. 134
This week, our old friend Darrell Etherington joins Becca Szkutak to talk with Professor Esther Rodriguez-Villegas from Acurable. Acurable is a medical device company that makes patient-friendly wearable devices that accurately diagnose and manage respiratory conditions at home. As a career-long academic, Rodriguez-Villegas never intended to be a founder until she learned about how the currently available medical devices made it extremely difficult to detect and treat diseases like sleep apnea a...
Oct 04, 2023•47 min•Ep. 133
The Found team recorded this episode live from TechCrunch Disrupt. Dom and Becca sat down with Window Snyder, a trailblazer in the cybersecurity industry who has dedicated her decades-long career to ensuring the internet and our devices are secure. Snyder talked about why after years of working at companies like Apple, Microsoft, Fastly, and Square now was the right time to launch her startup, Thistle, which looks to build the security infrastructure needed to keep internet-connected smart devic...
Sep 26, 2023•21 min•Ep. 132
On today’s episode of Found, Dom and Becca talk with Bianca Cefalo, CEO and co-founder of Space DOTS which is a space tech startup that makes testing materials in space cheaper and easier. This may sound a little far out but it is extremely difficult to validate new materials to be used in space. In this episode, Cefalo talks about how difficult it is to bootstrap a deep tech company, the challenges of testing materials in space, and how she leads their growing team. Found posts every Tuesday. S...
Sep 19, 2023•52 min•Ep. 131
https://nakedpoppy.com/ 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
Sep 12, 2023•42 min•Ep. 130
This episode is centered on Graham Hine, the co-founder and CEO of ePlant, a startup that creates sensors that monitor the health of trees. Hine talked about what got him interested in the tree space to begin with and what it was like transitioning to being a founder after working for years at a startup founded by his brother. Hine also talked about why the company decided to launch both B2B and consumer strategies and the wide breadth of potential use cases for the tech. Found posts every Tuesd...
Sep 05, 2023•46 min•Ep. 129
Have you ever thought about all of the experiences, shows, books, people, places, and other pieces of media that have all been mixed together to make your unique personality and interests? Do you think you could build a multi-media map to visually show all of these elements? On today’s episode of Found, the co-founder and CEO of Sane, Ida Josefiina is explains how they’re breaking social networking as we know it to find a solution for collective reasoning and even mitigate existential risk. In t...
Aug 29, 2023•41 min•Ep. 128
This week’s episode is focused on Feyi Ayodele, the co-founder and CEO of CancerIQ, a precision health company designed for physicians to help their patients with monitoring cancer risk and prevention. Ayodele talked about she came up with the startup idea while hiking Mount Kilimanjaro with her mother. She also talked about how she approached fundraising as a former VC herself and what it was like selling CancerIQ to healthcare organizations and hospitals. Found posts every Friday. Subscribe on...
Aug 22, 2023•46 min•Ep. 127
This episode centers on Marco Zappacosta, the co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, a startup that runs a marketplace for home services and beyond. Zappacosta talked about his unusual path to entrepreneurship which included almost getting a degree in neuroscience before deciding to start a company without having an existing idea. He also talked about growing Thumbtack through multiple market cycles and his mindset around leadership. Found posts every Friday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever yo...
Aug 15, 2023•42 min•Ep. 126
This week’s episode focuses on Anurupa Ganguly, the founder at CEO at Prisms, a startup designing VR math curriculum for middle and high school students. Ganguly talked about how her time as a teacher in the Boston and New York City public school systems were early inspirations for the company. She also talked about what it has been like selling to schools and her take on company culture in relation to remote and hybrid work. Found posts every Friday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you ...
Aug 08, 2023•47 min•Ep. 125
This episode focuses on ReBokeh, a startup that created an app that applies filters that allow people with low vision to see better. The founder and CEO Rebecca Rosenberg talked about how her own experience with having low vision inspired the product and what it was like building the startup as an undergrad when everything went remote in 2020. She also spoke about how the app will likely have multiple revenue streams and what it was like pitching the product to VCs who didn’t believe the disabil...
Aug 01, 2023•42 min•Ep. 124
This week’s episode features a conversation with Mandy Price, the co-founder and CEO at Kanarys, a SaaS startup that helps companies tackle their diversity and inclusion problems with data. Mandy talked about why she started the company after a decade-long career as a lawyer. She also talked about why she didn’t want Kanarys to just be focused on hiring metrics, as many other DEI platforms are, and when the company decided to start building out its sales team after years of inbound interest. Fou...
Jul 25, 2023•41 min•Ep. 123
This week’s episode features a conversation with Catherine Tabor, the founder and CEO of Sparkfly, a company that helps brands with marketing and customer engagement. Tabor talked about building a company fluid enough to adapt to changing technology trends over the last decade and how she was dismissed by venture capitalists despite landing notable customers. Plus, she talked about her leadership style and why she has a 1:1 meeting with every employee once a quarter. Found posts every Friday. Su...
Jul 18, 2023•40 min•Ep. 122
As a founder, you’ve got to be ready for anything, but nothing could have prepared Mercury CEO and founder Immad Akhund for the rapid growth his company experienced after the SVB bank crisis. We’re mixing it up this week and sharing an interview from our sister podcast, Equity. TechCrunch fintech reporter Mary Ann Azevedo talks with Akhund about how they onboarded a record number of startup customers and helped guide their current users through the SVB bank crash, how he thinks about fundraising...
Jul 11, 2023•30 min•Ep. 121
This week’s episode features Charles Baron, the co-founder and CMO at Farmers Business Network (FBN), a startup that offers a suite of online services to farmers. Baron talked about what led him — a former venture capitalist — to want to build in the agtech space. He talked about why the company chose to expand into multiple verticals quickly and how big of a need there was for what FBN offers. Found posts every Friday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts to be alerted...
Jul 04, 2023•45 min•Ep. 120
On today’s episode, we hear from the founders of Spout, a startup that makes a device that can pull fresh drinking water out of the air. Co-founder Reuben Vollmer talked about trying and failing to get the company off the ground for years before meeting his co-founder Tyler Breton. Both talked about how important getting the design of the product right is and how big of a need there is for a product like Spout. Found posts every Friday. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to podca...
Jun 27, 2023•48 min•Ep. 119
This week’s episode features Web Sun, the co-founder and president of Komodo Health, a startup that uses data to create a comprehensive map of the U.S. healthcare system. Web talked about what drove him to entrepreneurship and how mutual friends introduced him to his co-founder thinking they’d get along — little did they know. He also talked about navigating fundraising during the bull market and layoffs. Plus, Becca and Dom talk about their remaining questions after the interview. Found posts e...
Jun 20, 2023•44 min•Ep. 118
This week we hear from Amy Brown, the co-founder and CEO of Authenticx, a Midwestern startup that helps insurance companies and medical organizations extract data from their call centers using AI. Amy told Becca and Dom about how her background working in the same call centers inspired her to foray into entrepreneurship. She also talked about the sacrifices and very human side of being an entrepreneur and how they were very intentional when building their AI model. Found posts every Friday. Subs...
Jun 13, 2023•41 min•Ep. 117
On this week's episode, Dom and Becca are joined by Eli Ben-Joseph, the co-founder and CEO of Regard, a startup that uses AI to streamline the clinical side of medicine that's hoping to reduce physician burnout. Eli talked about his journey from deciding to forgo attending medical school because of the very issue he then decided to build a company to fix years later. He also talked about why it was important for them to build an AI model that requires a human touch and what it is like to sell to...
Jun 06, 2023•43 min•Ep. 116
On today’s episode, Becca and Dom chat with Dr. Stacy Blain, the co-founder and chief science officer at Concarlo Therapeutics. Blain talked about how she had been researching how to cure drug-resistant cancers before she accidentally found her way into entrepreneurship after her academic grants started getting denied. She also talked about why scientists make great founders and how the importance of the company’s mission is not lost on her Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders e...
May 30, 2023•45 min•Ep. 114
This week, Becca and Dom are joined by Sarah Sandnes, the co-founder and CTO of SafetyWing, which is creating a global safety net for remote workers. Sandnes is a digital nomad herself, so she understands the frustrations of frequently crossing borders and how difficult it can be to find affordable and high-quality health insurance as an employee. She also talked about how she and her co-founders have built a fully remote company that spans almost the entire globe -- because even digital nomads ...
May 23, 2023•41 min•Ep. 115
This week Becca and Dom are joined by Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, the co-founder and CEO at Samooha, a startup creating the infrastructure needed for data collaboration. Kamakshi talked about what it is like being a repeat founder in a male-dominated technical field. She talked about juggling being a parent and a company leader and how she thinks being a mother makes her a better entrepreneur. Plus, she talked about what may be the wildest startup acquisition story we’ve heard yet. Subscribe to F...
May 16, 2023•42 min•Ep. 113
Exciting news this week! Dominic-Madori Davis is joining Becca Szkutak as Found’s newest co-host. Say hi to her in a review or tweet us @found. In this week’s episode, we are talking with the co-founders who are reimagining boxed wine. Boxed wine hasn’t typically been thought of as aesthetically pleasing or particularly delicious, but Juliet co-founders Allison Luvera and Lauren De Niro Pipher, are on a mission to change that. According to the co-founders, glass bottles serve nothing but traditi...
May 09, 2023•47 min•Ep. 112
Getting diagnosed with a learning disability or attention disorder is crucial to getting students the support they need to be successful in the classroom, however, the assessments are extremely cost and time prohibitive. This week on Found Darrell and Becca are talking with Stefan Bauer about how Marker Learning is cutting the cost of learning disability assessments by conducting them remotely, how they’ve successfully worked with school districts to help them test their required amount of stude...
May 02, 2023•44 min•Ep. 111
We’re coming at you live from TechCrunch’s Early Stage in Boston. Darrell and Becca are joined onstage by Russ Wilcox who founded E Ink and is currently a partner at Pillar VC. They discussed how Russ navigated multiple economic downturns and eventually sold E Ink to Amazon, why he made the change from Founder to VC, and how he can usually tell within the first two minutes of a meeting if he will invest. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week. Connect with us: On Twitter...
Apr 25, 2023•32 min•Ep. 110
Welcome back to Found, the TechCrunch podcast where you hear the stories behind the startups from the entrepreneurs themselves. In this week’s episode, Trevor Martin co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences comes on to discuss how the company is using CRISPR systems to detect and cure genetic diseases. He talks with Darrell and Becca about using the importance of transparency when creating innovative medical technology, using CRISPR to build therapies that will help patients in the real world, and what...
Apr 18, 2023•45 min•Ep. 109
We’re thrilled to be nominated for a Webby award in the Best Technology Podcast category. You can help Found win by voting here. Voting closes April 20. Building a startup is hard in any market and there is no right way to do it. You can rely on Found to get the real stories behind the startups and hear from entrepreneurs about how they’ve grown their companies and the choices they’ve made along the way. Recently, we’ve had an awesome lineup of startups on the show, from Swedish fintech giant Kl...
Apr 12, 2023•46 sec•Ep. 108
