Fund/Build/Scale

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I talked with YL Ventures Partner Andy Ellis (a former CISO) about his approach to storytelling, tactics for founder-led sales and marketing, and why he thinks th…

Two of the three co-founders of Operant AI — CTO Dr. Priyanka Tembey and CMO Ashley Roof — joined me to talk about building the first runtime application protection platform and navigating the challe…

Startups are built on grit, vision, and — surprisingly — a lot of peer advice. In this episode, I sat down with Mallory Contois, Head of Community at Mercury and leader of Mercury Raise, their founde…

In October 2024, New York-based Swell VC announced its second fund with $11.5 million in commitments. 

Co-founded by general partners Jay Patil and Rusty Ralston in 2011, the firm now manages two see…

If a team hasn’t built a minimum viable product, secured paying customers, or demonstrated strong unit economics, what exactly are seed-stage investors betting on?

To get some answers, I sat down wit…

In the startups I worked at, we never had spare laptops. 

When we hired someone, we’d order their laptop that day. That’s Startup Cashflow 101: don’t spend money until you have to.

The same principle…

When I learned that MaC Venture Capital just raised $150 million for its third fund since 2020, I immediately reached out for an interview with Marlon Nichols, the firm’s co-founder and managing gene…

In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, host Walter Thompson interviews Sahil Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of Encrypt AI. Sahil shares his journey from academia to leading an international AI company, di…

Branding is a condensed form of storytelling.

That’s my opinion, but it’s also shared by David Placek, founder and president of Lexicon Branding. Here are a few of the companies and products they’ve …

Deeptech founders are solving problems that most of us don’t think of as problems and tackling challenges that push the boundaries of what we think is possible.

This interview with Justin Fiaschetti,…

If you want a healthy relationship, it’s essential to set clear expectations and boundaries from the start. 

The same holds true for a founder and their board. Despite the power dynamics, CEOs can st…

In 2011, Tracy Young co-founded PlanGrid, which made software for construction teams. After scaling the company to 450 people and raising $69 million, it was acquired by Autodesk in 2018 for $875 mil…

Most of the world’s talent goes untapped. Unrecognized.

With that in mind, I interviewed Laura González-Estéfani, founder of Miami-based VC firm TheVentureCity in May 2024.

We talked about the potent…

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, …

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 …

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 b…

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 …

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 backi…

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 o…

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, t…