Practical Founders Podcast
by Greg Head
Latest episode
#221: Earnouts, Ratchets and Consent Rights: The Exit Terms Founders…
#221: Earnouts, Ratchets and Consent Rights: The Exit Terms Founders…
About this podcast
Tune into the Practical Founders Podcast with host Greg Head for weekly in-depth interviews with founders who have built valuable software companies--without big funding.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 220 episodes
- #221: Earnouts, Ratchets and Consent Rights: The Exit Terms Founders Miss - Jesse Welch · 1 h 14 min · Season 1 Episode 221Jesse Welch runs Midcap Global, a boutique investment bank advising companies with $1 million to over $10 million in profits. He came from film production, AI startups, a real…
- #220: You Can Skip Venture Capital and Still Raise Too Much - Jerry Nettuno · 1 h 6 min · Season 1 Episode 220Jerry Nettuno started Schedulicity in Bozeman, Montana, in 2009 after struggling to book his own haircut as a single father. He recruited his first developers from Denver, paid…
- #219: Vibe-Coded Isn't Validating: Rob Walling's Warning for AI-Era Founders - Rob Walling · 1 h 1 min · Season 1 Episode 219Rob Walling has been publishing Startups for the Rest of Us every week since 2010 — he recorded episode 855 the morning of this interview — and has written five books on…
- #218: He Built Debt Collection SaaS While Paying Off $1M in Personal Debt - Josh Allen · 1 h 9 min · Season 1 Episode 218Josh Allen is founder and CEO of Tratta, software for debt collection agencies and creditor rights law firms that gives consumers self-service payment tools and gives agents…
- #217: His Hardest Lesson: Going Too Fast Was More Risky, Even With Funding - Shawn Boyer · 1 h 12 min · Season 1 Episode 217Shawn Boyer is founder and CEO of goHappy, a frontline employee communication and engagement platform for companies with a thousand or more hourly workers in restaurants…
- #216: Messy Financials Killed a Good LOI and Slowed a Profitable SaaS Sale - Riccardo Pisano · 1 h 1 min · Season 1 Episode 216Riccardo Pisano grew up in Rome, started coding at fourteen, and came to the US for a master's in e-commerce. After a venture-chasing startup called Proximity stalled, he and…
- #215: How This Early-Stage Growth Equity Partner Is Investing in SaaS in 2026 - Steve Wolfe · 1 h 4 min · Season 1 Episode 215Steve Wolfe co-founded Growth Street Partners in San Francisco about ten years ago with his partner Nate Grossman, after a career in software-focused private equity. The firm's…
- #214: He Stopped Being the Face of the Company Before He Sold It - Heath Adams · 1 h 10 min · Season 1 Episode 214Heath Adams is a military veteran in Albuquerque who started posting ethical hacking videos on YouTube under the handle The Cyber Mentor. The videos found a large audience…
- #213: She Took on a Growth Equity Partner for the Advice, Not the Money - Lynn Burghardt · 1 h 6 min · Season 1 Episode 213Lynn Burghardt is a fifth-generation owner of Burghardt Sporting Goods — the oldest family-owned sporting goods store in the country, founded in 1881. Chipply grew out of that…
- #212: The Practical Case for Payments-Driven SaaS Growth, Not Subscriptions - Jay Majaraj · 1 h 4 min · Season 1 Episode 212Jay Maharaj built TeamLinkt in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a place not known for software. He saw the problem while coaching his own kids: the hockey team had a budget for a team…
- #211: This Practical Bootstrapper Scaled Up and Became a Serial Acquirer - Ajay Gupta · 1 h 9 min · Season 1 Episode 211Ajay Gupta founded Stirista in San Antonio after helping with micro-targeting a presidential campaign. His first product identified people who spoke a second language for…
- #210: 4th Time Founder: Solve Distribution First, Write Code After - Vic Levitin · 58 min · Season 1 Episode 210Vic Levitin is a serial founder who built companies in Israel for two decades before fleeing the war with his young family to the island of Koh Samui, Thailand. His first SaaS…
- #209: Leading from Both Sides of the Table as a PE-Backed SaaS CEO - Steve Oriola · 53 min · Season 1 Episode 209Steve Oriola isn't the founder of Unbounce — he's the CEO that Crest Rock Partners brought in to run and transform it. A sales-and-marketing software veteran who spent a decade…
- #208: How AI Rewrote What Active SaaS Buyers Want in 2026 - Mike Lyon · 1 h 13 min · Season 1 Episode 208Mike Lyon is the founder and managing director of Vista Point Advisors, a boutique sell-side investment bank he started almost sixteen years ago. A former chemical engineer at…
- #207: Former Teacher Built a Market-Leading School Hiring Marketplace - Wayne Cartmel · 1 h 4 min · Season 1 Episode 207Wayne Cartmel grew up on a small farm in the Lake District region of northwest England and was selling chickens by the age of four. He trained as a maths teacher in Bedfordshire…
- #206: He Sold at $3M ARR and Got a 10X+ Exit to a PE Buyer - Eran Galperin · 1 h 15 min · Season 1 Episode 206Eran Galperin is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who had already had one VC-backed marketplace failure when he started Gymdesk. Originally called Martial Arts on Rails, it…
- #205: Domain Knowledge Is the New Moat, Not Features and Code - Cliff Sentel · 1 h 11 min · Season 1 Episode 205Cliff Sentell co-founded Compass Professional Health Services in Dallas in 2005, where he and two partners each put in $20,000 and bought a single server. They started in…
- #204: He Sold a Majority, Gave Up Control, and Became Indispensable - Matthew Bullis · 1 h 7 min · Season 1 Episode 204Matthew Bullis grew up in a mud-brick hut with no running water on a small island off South Korea, was adopted to the US at 11 speaking no English. After a dot-com near-miss, he…
- #203: Every Software Team Should Put AI Agents on the Org Chart - Nick Olsen · 1 h 2 min · Season 1 Episode 203Nick Olsen is the Head of AI Innovation at Mainsail Partners, where he works hands-on with 25 scaling vertical SaaS companies helping them adopt AI in engineering and product…
- #202: Practical Fintech: Surviving Payment Platforms and Big Banks - Paul Hoeper · 56 min · Season 1 Episode 202Paul Hoeper founded InvoiceASAP after spotting a simple but painful problem in 2009: home service businesses couldn't easily create invoices or collect payments from the field…
