We Built It Because We Had To - Tech Founder Backstories

Jonathan W. Buckley of The Artesian Network
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  • Entrepreneurship
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We Built It Because We Had To is a founder-interview podcast from The Artesian Network, hosted by Jonathan Buckley. Each episode digs into the real founder journey behind B2B SaaS and tech startups — the backstories, the drama, the lessons, go-to-market, product-market fit, fundraising, enterprise sales, scaling, and how agentic AI is reshaping the bet.

  1. He Fired His Freelancers and Built a 500-Person Dev Shop to Replace Them — Furqan Aziz, InvoZone

    1d ago

    He Fired His Freelancers and Built a 500-Person Dev Shop to Replace Them — Furqan Aziz, InvoZone

    Most founders spend year one chasing product-market fit. Furqan Aziz spent his chasing something harder to build than any product: trust. In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, host Jonathan W. Buckley sits down with Furqan Aziz, CEO and Founder of InvoZone. As a CTO in San Francisco, Furqan was burned by unreliable freelance developers who ghosted mid-project and missed deadlines on tight financial-services SLAs. So he built the team he wished he'd had: a dedicated, trained software organization in Lahore that has since grown to more than 500 engineers across five global offices. You'll hear how Furqan turned the offshore category's biggest liability — buyers who had been burned before — into his opening, using Clutch-verified reviews, client reference calls, and a free trial that takes price off the table. He explains why the cheapest offshore team is usually the most expensive mistake, and makes a contrarian bet that AI will create more demand for engineers, not less, as the number of startups explodes. He also gets candid about the two startups he failed before InvoZone, the co-founder lesson he learned the hard way, and the 3 a.m. call when an engineer wiped the production database — and the leadership mindset that saved it. Guest: Furqan Aziz, CEO and Founder, InvoZoneLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsfurqanaziz/Company: https://invozone.com/ If you like the real stories behind building technology companies, subscribe and join us for the next conversation. Learn more about The Artesian Network at https://www.artesiannetwork.com and find every episode at https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com Tags:  Furqan Aziz, InvoZone, Invo Zone, offshore software development, dedicated development team, Pakistan software engineers, Lahore developers, offshore development trust, Clutch reviews, co-founder lessons, production database disaster, AI and software engineering jobs, We Built It Because We Had To, Jonathan W. Buckley, The Artesian Network

    29 min

  2. 4d ago

    How Klearly Pivoted to Dominate Hospitality Payments (Geus Walder) (S1 E21)

    What if going narrower is what makes you fundable? Geus Walder co-founded Klearly as a generalist soft-POS app — download an app, turn any phone into a payment terminal, no hardware required. It gained traction across taxis, retail, and more. But a year of staying close to customers kept pointing to one place: hospitality had the deepest payment pain and the worst-fitting tools. So Klearly cut everything else and became a hospitality-only specialist — and that focus is what unlocked the growth, including a $12M Series A led by PayPal Ventures and a jump to 53 people. In this episode, Geus walks through the lean-startup path behind it: validating demand with a gamified landing page that drew 600+ businesses before the product existed, raising a pre-seed with Antler to actually build it, and the operating principle the team still runs on — "speed over perfection." He also explains why in-person payments were the overlooked 80% of the market, how Klearly onboards merchants in three days instead of three weeks, and why hiring salespeople from inside hospitality (not from payments) became an unfair advantage. If you've ever been told to widen your market to grow, this conversation argues the opposite. Chapters 00:00 Klearly and the hospitality-payments thesis 01:06 From consulting to founding Klearly 02:00 23 hires in a quarter and a $12M Series A led by PayPal Ventures 03:00 SMB generalist vs. hospitality specialist 03:51 The pivot to horeca-only 05:56 Selling before building: the 600+ business landing page 07:41 "Speed over perfection" 08:56 The overlooked 80%: in-person payments 11:31 Go-to-market: direct sales plus ordering-system partnerships 14:19 Hiring hospitality insiders, not payments people 16:38 De-risking the leap to full-time 19:29 Lessons from the lean-startup path Guest: Geus Walder, Co-founder, Klearly LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/geuswalder/ Klearly: https://klearly.nl Subscribe to We Built It Because We Had To for founder stories on building and scaling B2B tech. More at https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com and https://artesiannetwork.com

    20 min

  3. Jun 18

    The Customer Success Branding Gap Most SaaS Companies Miss (Arne Hurty)

    Most SaaS companies spend heavily to win the deal — then go silent the moment the contract is signed. Arne Hurty has spent three decades watching that gap widen, and building a firm to help close it.In this episode, I'm joined by Arne Hurty, founder of BayCreative, a strategic branding and marketing firm that has supported Silicon Valley tech companies since 1997. Arne walks me through three decades of building a deliberately small strategy shop — peak headcount of about 10 — that has worked with roughly 200 customers, 90% of them right here in the Valley. He shares the desktop publishing origin story (an early Mac SE in 1986, ten years at IDG before launching the firm), how the early customer base came together through Google and AltaVista paid search plus word of mouth, and the founder lesson that has stuck the longest: walk before you run with a new client.We dig into his "small rock" metaphor for why staying lean became his durability advantage, and the harder conversations around scoping, pricing, and clarification up front. The bigger thesis we land on is the gap between pre-sale and post-sale brand experience — Arne argues customer success teams are starved for branding and messaging support, despite renewals being where loyalty is actually built. A candid conversation about resilience, adaptability, and where Arne sees the next chapter of BayCreative going.Guest & ResourcesConnect with Arne Hurty:https://www.linkedin.com/in/arnehurty/BayCreative: https://www.baycreative.comWe Built It Because We Had To is the founder-backstory podcast from The Artesian Network. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation.Visit us at: https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com

    36 min

  4. Jun 16

    2 Million Autonomous Fixes In PayPal Production — Then He Spun It Out (Suresh Mathew)

    What happens when cloud deployment outpaces the humans managing it? At PayPal, Suresh Mathew's team built the answer — an autonomous system that ran 2 million production remediations before he spun it out as Sedai. In this episode, I'm joined by Suresh Mathew, founder and CEO of Sedai. We talk about the problem DevOps created: developers deploying directly to production faster than any SRE team could keep up. The instinct was to hire more engineers. Suresh's team built smarter — an autonomous system that handled 80% of production operations without human intervention. No 2 AM pages. Just 2 million remediations quietly running in the background. PayPal eventually mandated it: if your app wasn't compatible with the tool, you needed an approval to deploy. Then Suresh took the idea and made it work for the rest of the world. We get into the hard stuff: raising a seed in May 2020, growing to ~100 employees, closing a $20M Series B, and the Lambda market mistake that forced an early ICP pivot. Suresh shares his formula for hiring — strength over perfect fit — and the one signal he uses to know you have product-market fit: when your team stops dreading customer meetings and starts racing to get into them. He also explains why autonomous systems must run at zero tolerance for production failure. Not five nines. Zero. Guest & Resources Suresh Mathew, Founder & CEO, Sedai LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sureshmathew/ Sedai: https://www.sedai.io We Built It Because We Had To is the founder-backstory podcast from The Artesian Network. New episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation. Visit us at: https://www.WeBuiltItBecauseWeHadTo.com

    25 min

  5. Jun 11

    Why AI Data Centers Could Break the U.S. Power Grid | Michael Parrella

    AI data centers are hitting the U.S. power grid like five-gigawatt toasters — and unlike Bitcoin, that demand can never be switched off.In this episode, I sit down with Michael Parrella, CEO of ennrgy.com, about an existential moment most founders recognize but few talk about honestly: learning your largest customer is walking out the door. Michael returned as CEO of ennrgy in late 2024, and within weeks he learned they were about to lose their biggest account to a cheaper, more modern competitor. He didn't discount his way out. His team stopped defending the old product and asked one question: what do energy operators actually need? The answer — give them the decision first, the supporting data second — became the foundation of a rebuilt company. By December they had reacquired his old firm SoftSmiths and folded it in. What started as a near-death experience became the product strategy.Michael also breaks down what he calls the five-gigawatt toaster problem: AI data centers are plugging enormous, uncurtailable demand into a grid that was never built for it. He explains the fragmented reality of U.S. energy markets, why some jurisdictions are already requiring data centers to build their own power supply, why AI demand is fundamentally different from Bitcoin demand, and what it will take to prevent AI growth from crushing the energy infrastructure it runs on.Timestamps:00:01 — Welcome and intro01:01 — Career arc: from energy CEO to Chief Strategy Officer and back02:59 — The moment they learned they were losing their largest customer03:55 — How the team rebuilt the product around decision-first thinking05:11 — What ennrgy AI does: forecasting, pricing, settlements06:36 — Inverting the pyramid: decision at the top, data underneath10:05 — AI data centers and the electricity demand surge12:07 — The five-gigawatt toaster problem explained13:06 — Why AI demand cannot be curtailed the way Bitcoin demand can14:06 — Can we physically build enough power supply fast enough?15:28 — Being an ostrich doesn't work: what must be done16:19 — Parting words: existential moments create your best momentsConnect with Michael Parrella:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeparrella/Company: https://www.ennrgy.aiSubscribe to We Built It Because We Had To on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Follow Artesian Network for more conversations with the founders and operators who built their companies the hard way. https://www.webuiltitbecausewehadto.com

    16 min

  6. Jun 9

    Inside the 64 Billion Identity Breach Data Lake — Andres Andreu, CEO of Constella Intelligence

    Andres Andreu sits on one of the richest datasets in cybersecurity — nearly 64 billion breached identities — and for years growth still stalled. The problem was never the data. It was who Constella was selling it to. In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, Andres Andreu, CEO of Constella Intelligence, walks through the breach-data lake his company has amassed over 16-plus years and how it now feeds OEM cybersecurity vendors like Norton LifeLock and intelligence agencies across Europe, including Europol. You'll hear how a single ICP mistake — pitching CISOs who had no team to operationalize the data — held the company back, and how the shift to an OEM model drove 17% revenue growth in a single year. Andres also traces his arc from building federal law enforcement wiretap systems in the 1990s, to taking Bayshore Networks from employee number three to exit in 2021, to stepping into the CEO seat at Constella just six months after joining as COO. Along the way he shares the "fail fast" moment that forced his team to scrap part of their product and build a machine learning engine that earned an internationally granted patent — and saved the company. If you're a founder or operator wrestling with product-market fit, ICP, or when to kill what you've built, this one is for you. Chapters 00:00 What Constella Intelligence actually does 03:09 Why passwords barely change over 15 years 04:34 Inside the 24/7 breach-hunting program 05:18 Two ICPs: OEM vendors and intelligence agencies 05:47 From 90s federal wiretap systems to founding Bayshore Networks 09:20 The ICP mistake: selling to CISOs who couldn't use the data 10:25 OEM partners: Norton LifeLock, Europol, and beyond 13:07 "My vendor has 17 billion identities." "I have 64." 15:38 The fail-fast moment that led to a patent — and saved the company 19:13 What's driving growth now: customer-driven APIs and ICP focus About the guest Andres Andreu is the CEO of Constella Intelligence, a cyber-intelligence company operating one of the world's largest breach-data lakes. He brings 33 years in cybersecurity, from federal law enforcement to a 2021 startup exit with Bayshore Networks, and is the author of an internationally granted machine learning patent. Connect with Andres: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andresandreu/ Learn more about Constella Intelligence: https://constella.ai/ Subscribe to We Built It Because We Had To for new founder stories every Tuesday and Thursday. Hosted by Jonathan Buckley of The Artesian Network — fractional CMO guidance for early-stage tech founders. Learn more at https://www.artesiannetwork.com

    21 min

  7. Jun 4

    Exploitation Validation: Beyond Blinking Red Dots (Karen Nguyen)

    Most companies build their front door out of glass — and the guard dog is asleep all day.That's how Karen Nguyen describes the security gap her company exists to close. In this episode, Karen — co-founder and CEO of OFFENSAI — joins Jonathan Buckley on the morning she launched v2 of her autonomous cybersecurity platform. We get into what "exploitation validation" actually means and why it's not just another vulnerability scanner, how she's funding the company with paying customers and pre-seed angels instead of chasing a bloated Series A, and the over-hiring failure that taught her the most honest lesson we've had on the show: undershoot or overshoot, and nobody wins — land exactly where you said you would. It's a candid conversation about building lean, selling to skeptical CISOs, and the discipline of capacity planning in a market drunk on nine-figure rounds.What you'll learn:- Why "blinking red dots everywhere" is a noise problem, and how attack-chain validation cuts through it- How to run product-led growth in a category where CISOs say no to PLG by default- The case for paying customers over a giant Series A, and when institutional money actually helps- How an over-hire cycle right before the bubble burst reshaped how Karen plans capacity- What 15 years in startup go-to-market taught her about handling fundraising rejectionTimestamps:(00:00) Meet Karen Nguyen and OFFENSAI's v2 launch day(01:55) From immigrant kid to 15 years in startup go-to-market(03:29) Female founders, fundraising, and not taking "no" personally(06:47) Pre-seed angels and the trust behind early funding(07:51) Bootstrapping vs. a Series A market gone inflationary(09:51) Building a lean go-to-market system(12:00) PLG for CISOs: getting to value in the first 15 minutes(14:35) Exploitation validation and the "front door of glass"(16:38) Defying the odds: the first-generation immigrant arc(20:06) The over-hire failure right before the bubble burst(24:11) Capacity planning and "Build It. Test It. Prove It."(26:41) Why a nine-figure Series A sets a trapAbout the guest:Karen Nguyen is co-founder and CEO of OFFENSAI, an AI-powered cloud security testing platform built around autonomous red teaming and continuous exploitation validation. She spent 15 years in startup go-to-market and eight years selling cybersecurity to CISOs before co-founding the company.Connect with Karen Nguyen: https://www.linkedin.com/in/knguyen4/OFFENSAI: https://www.offensai.comWe Built It Because We Had To is hosted by Jonathan Buckley, fractional CMO at The Artesian Network. New founder stories every Tuesday and Thursday — subscribe so you never miss one. Learn more at https://www.artesiannetwork.com

    27 min

  8. Jun 2

    The 272-Day B2B Sales Cycle (Nick Turner)

    The B2B sales cycle just hit 272 days. That is not friction. That is a buying committee with a new veto holder back at the table.In this episode of We Built It Because We Had To, I sit down with Nick Turner, CEO of Dreamdata, the Copenhagen-founded B2B revenue attribution platform that closed a $55M Series B in October. Nick spent twenty years in MarTech sales before joining Dreamdata as CRO to open the US market, and recently stepped into the CEO seat. We get into the counter-intuitive move that preceded the round — narrowing the ICP and the user persona instead of broadening it — and what Dreamdata's latest LinkedIn benchmark data is telling us about how B2B buying actually works in 2026.You will learn why the average B2B sales cycle stretched from roughly 205 days a year ago to 272 days today, why finance teams are reasserting veto power inside the buyer, why roughly eight different people are active in every account every week, and why Nick cut the Dreamdata product roadmap to six months in an Anthropic-funded world where assumptions expire fast. Nick explains why his North Star metric is the tenure of the CMO who uses the platform, and why you should never ask a marketer to manufacture demand for a deal that has to close this quarter. He closes with three lessons that shaped his path: you are a product of your failures more than your successes, all you need is one yes (he pitched 74 investors to close the round), and know yourself — he once joined a pre-revenue company and fell flat because scaling, not zero-to-one, was his game.If you run revenue, sit in the CMO chair, or own a number that depends on a buying committee saying yes, this one is for you.GuestNick Turner — Chief Executive Officer, DreamdataLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cnickturner/Company: https://dreamdata.ioAbout the showWe Built It Because We Had To is a podcast about early-stage tech founders, the spark behind what they built, and the journey to make it exist. Hosted by Jonathan Buckley of The Artesian Network, where we have helped founders scale companies and have seen more than half of our clients reach an IPO or acquisition.Subscribe wherever you listen, follow the show on YouTube for the full video, and learn more at https://artesiannetwork.com.— Jonathan Buckley, The Artesian Network

    21 min
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We Built It Because We Had To is a founder-interview podcast from The Artesian Network, hosted by Jonathan Buckley. Each episode digs into the real founder journey behind B2B SaaS and tech startups — the backstories, the drama, the lessons, go-to-market, product-market fit, fundraising, enterprise sales, scaling, and how agentic AI is reshaping the bet.

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