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, batt...
Aug 25, 2024•44 min•Season 2Ep. 10
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, highli...
Aug 22, 2024•36 min•Season 2Ep. 10
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 ...
Aug 04, 2024•45 min•Season 2Ep. 9
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 actuall...
Aug 04, 2024•42 min•Season 2Ep. 8
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 founders. ...
Jul 29, 2024•30 min•Season 2Ep. 7
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 assessment...
Jul 22, 2024•38 min•Season 2Ep. 6
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...
Jul 20, 2024•22 min•Season 2Ep. 5
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...
Jul 13, 2024•24 min•Season 2Ep. 4
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 co...
Jul 11, 2024•52 min•Season 2Ep. 3
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 Combinato...
Jul 09, 2024•42 min•Season 2Ep. 2
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,...
Jun 27, 2024•2 min
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...
Jun 17, 2024•1 hr 17 min•Season 1Ep. 10
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 ...
Jun 06, 2024•48 min•Season 1Ep. 9
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...
May 14, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 8
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...
May 01, 2024•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 7
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 ...
Apr 22, 2024•21 min•Season 1Ep. 12
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 pa...
Apr 22, 2024•21 min•Season 1Ep. 11
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 conversation:...
Apr 16, 2024•29 min•Season 1Ep. 6
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 ...
Apr 03, 2024•39 min•Season 1Ep. 5
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 f...
Mar 19, 2024•40 min•Season 1Ep. 4
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 worl...
Mar 05, 2024•35 min•Season 1Ep. 3
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 ...
Feb 21, 2024•41 min•Season 1Ep. 2
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 solut...
Feb 07, 2024•47 min•Season 1Ep. 1
Hi. I’m Walter Thompson . I worked in startups for years before becoming a journalist. Now, I’m launching “Fund/Build/Scale,” a podcast that explains how to create an AI startup when all you have is an idea. If you’re seeking general thought leadership or predictions about AI, this is not the podcast for you. Guests on “Fund/Build/Scale” are sharing strategies and frameworks that listeners can adapt and use inside their own companies. We’re discussing the ins and outs of fundraising, product dev...
Dec 03, 2023•2 min•Season 1Ep. 1
