Founders in Motion with Thea Ngo
autor: Thea Ngo
Nejnovější epizoda
AI Insurance Brokerage: 80 Marathons, Uninsured, Nearly Killed Him |…
AI Insurance Brokerage: 80 Marathons, Uninsured, Nearly Killed Him |…
O tomto podcastu
The best early-stage founders before the world catches on and how they're building their business today,
Australia, Southeast Asia, the US, and everywhere in between.
Hosted by Thea Ngo (Wharton grad, early-stage investor), each episode is one unscripted conversation with a founder who is still in it, while the decisions are still fresh.
Think
→ Customer discovery hacks to sell before you build
→ Fundraising rounds that nearly didn't close & ones that closed too rapidly
→ Pivots that saved the company, and ones that didn't
New episodes every Thursday
Epizody
Nejnovějších 20 z 39 epizod
- AI Insurance Brokerage: 80 Marathons, Uninsured, Nearly Killed Him | Sean Stuart, Rosella · 35 minAI-native commercial insurance is being built by a man who once ran 80 marathons in 80 days with no coverage at all because every policy excluded anything past two. Sean Stuart…
- Basketball Stats From One Phone Video: Their $3.5M AI Pivot | Cordelia King, Superstat · 28 minBasketball stats used to require a scout in the gym. Now one phone video gives every player full box scores and highlights, and the team behind it is leaving Melbourne for…
- Quibi: How a $1.75B Startup Died in 6 Months · 14 minQuibi raised $1.75 billion before it had a single show, hired Spielberg and Reese Witherspoon to make TV for your phone, and shut down six months after launch. This is a fun new…
- Why AI Can't Fix Your Business and the $10M Raise He Regrets | Lee Lagdameo, Shikii Labs · 28 minLee Lagdameo crossed over from the other side of the table to build one of the AI companies he used to back — and four months into Shikii Labs, he says most companies aren't…
- Impact Investing at $10: The Fortune He Lost, The Fund He Built | Arjun Agarwal, inaam · 31 minArjun Agarwal is the founder and CEO of inaam, a flat-fee alternative to funds that take a percentage of your money. We talk about his family's fortune disappearing in South…
- AI for Lawyers: 300 Features, They Used One | Rowan McNamee, Mary Technology · 31 minRowan McNamee builds AI for lawyers that processes thousands of pages of case documents built so it can never make the final call. His first prototype had 300 ways to turn a…
- Passive Investing Australia: Get Rich Slow, The Fintech That Tells You to Trade Less | Hayden Smith, Pearler · 21 minHayden Smith started Pearler with negative money, medical bills he couldn't pay, surgery coming up. The company he built tells everyday Australians to invest and then leave it…
- $350M Fintech Founder Steps Down as CEO to Rebuild With AI | Josh Foreman, InDebted · 27 minJosh Foreman built InDebted from his first $12 in revenue to over $1M a week, profitable, 200 people, $350M valuation, then stepped down as CEO to rebuild the whole company from…
- Battery Storage Founder: 8 Months of Rejection, One Term Sheet He Refused | Rakhesh Martyn, Hachiko Energy · 27 minEight months of pitching, nothing to show for it, then the first term sheet finally arrives, and his own lawyer tells him not to sign. So he walks away from the only offer he…
- Ketamine for Treatment-Resistant Depression: The Doctor Who Left Medicine to Build a Clinic Network | Lauren Barker, Good Mind Therapeutics · 19 minLauren spent nearly a decade as a doctor before she joined a chaotic mental-health startup. Then the model broke, her co-founder walked, and she rebuilt the company alone…
- $15M ARR Fintech Founder: I Found My First Customer on Facebook | Caroline Tran, Hello Clever · 22 minCaroline Tran cold-DMed the CEO of Tasmania's largest telco through a Facebook group, no product, no brand, no payments background. He said yes. That became Hello Clever: $15M…
- The D1 Athlete Who Built a $100M Voice AI Company | Will Bodewes, Phonely (YC S24) · 29 minWill Bodewes wrote a sticky note to himself on day one of building Phonely: "there are no shortcuts for you, Bodewes." That note sat on his desk every day for 2 years. We talk…
- $40M FinTech Founder on Raising Millions Before He Had a Business Idea | Shakeel Lala, Marloo · 35 minShak quit his job, convinced a VC to back him with no business idea, and spent nine months running 800 conversations with financial advisors before building Marloo - the AI doing…
- He Turned Falling Socks into an Eight Figure Global Brand | Nathan Yun, Paire · 30 minNathan Yun built Paire into an eight-figure brand by doing almost everything the DTC playbook said not to: engineering fabric from scratch, opening a physical store, and turning…
- This Stanford Dropout Wants to Help You Fall in Love | Celeste Amadon, Known · 29 minCeleste Amadon left Stanford, cancelled her job offers, and raised her seed round in four days before Known had a single paying user. Her thesis: dating apps aren't broken by…
- How He Turned 3 YC Rejections into a $25M AI Governance Company | Nam Nguyen, TruthSystems (YC S25) · 25 minNam got told to come back in 5 years by major law firms. A year later he was YC-backed, had raised $4M in 48 hours, and was serving some of the biggest law firms in the world…
- Why Early Facebook Investors Backed a Self-Taught Aussie Dev | Finnlay Morcombe, Fluency · 23 minFinnlay raised $6M from Accel VC weeks after landing in the US, no deck, no data room, just two pages. But the bigger story is what Fluency is actually building: a platform that…
- What Harvard Didn't Know: I Was Already Building an 8-Figure Startup | Stephen Turban, Lumiere Education · 30 minStephen Turban was two semesters into his Harvard PhD when he got called into a Zoom room and confronted with his own face on the Lumiere website. The ultimatum was simple: PhD…
- He Ran One of Australia's Biggest Athleisure Brands - Then Built Software to Fix Its Biggest Flaw | Jevon Le Roux, Keeyu · 28 minJevon dropped out of high school to become a pro surfer, then built Nike's Hurley brand in South Africa, ran PE Nation and Surf Stitch, and now he's building Keeyu, an AI…
- He Quit a Six-Figure Consulting Job to Sell Chilli Oil | Ethan Yong, Umami Papi · 29 minHow do you turn a lockdown side project into a cult food brand? In this episode of Founders in Motion, Ethan Yong, founder of Umami Papi, shares the real story behind building…
