Very First Win

Goanna Capital
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Success doesn't start with a headline. It starts with a first win. Very First Win takes you inside the exact moment top founders, investors, and operators realized they could actually make it. Each episode unpacks the deal, decision, or breakthrough that changed everything, and what that moment taught them. Hosted by Rob Hilmer of Goanna Capital, with guests spanning founders, investors, and industry leaders shaping what comes next. New episodes weekly.

  1. 6d ago

    Dean Karnazes: 50 Marathons, 50 States, 50 Days

    Dean Karnazes was 30 years old with the corporate job, the stock options, the company car, all of it. And he was miserable. So on the night of his 30th birthday he walked out of a San Francisco bar at midnight and ran 30 miles to Half Moon Bay in his underwear. He quit his job somewhere along the way.Three decades later he's run on all seven continents three times, run a marathon in all 50 states in 50 straight days, run across Australia and the ancient Silk Road, and won the Badwater Ultramarathon across Death Valley.Rob talks to Dean about what actually made him do it, plus two pieces of advice depending on where you're starting from: one for anyone trying to get moving, and one for the founder who already has their life dialed in. Dean joined us from Athens.Robert Hilmer on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/https://goannacapital.com/Listen to Very First Win:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0cTzEJW3juIZEBnyswNl9c?si=674c885122c64a70Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapital

  2. Aug 6

    eToro's Yoni Assia: We Listed Bitcoin in 2013 and Nobody Cared for 4 Years

    Yoni Assia is the co-founder and CEO of eToro, the social investing platform with more than 40 million registered users that listed on the Nasdaq in May 2025. He sat down with Rob Hilmer for Very First Win to walk through the moments the company was actually built on. His first trade at 13, sitting in his parents' basement, watching the price move on a Yahoo Finance blotter and realizing everything was connected. The 2008 financial crisis, when the banks unplugged the system and he started writing about what a 24/7 financial infrastructure should look like instead. Finding Bitcoin, working on the colored coins protocol with Vitalik Buterin, and listing Bitcoin on eToro in 2013 when almost nobody was paying attention. Then 2017, when the market finally showed up and eToro went from 200 new funded accounts a day to 20,000. He also gets into the last 30 days at eToro, where AI has gone from writing about 30% of their code to 70-80% on some teams, what OpenClaw unlocked internally, and why he thinks every retail investor is about to have a team of agents trading on their behalf. CONNECT Robert Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/ LISTEN Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0cTzEJW3juIZEBnyswNl9c?si=674c885122c64a70 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapital Very First Win is hosted by Robert Hilmer, founder of Goanna Capital, a global private equity firm investing in category-leading private technology companies.

  3. Jul 30

    Karl Stefanovic on the First Break That Started 26 Years on TV

    Karl Stefanovic spent 26 years at Nine, 21 of them on free to air, and won a Gold Logie along the way. On this episode he sits down with Rob Hilmer to talk about the very first win that got him there.Robert Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/ Listen to Very First Win:Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0cTzEJW3juIZEBnyswNl9c?si=674c885122c64a70Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapital Very First Win is produced by Goanna Capital, a private equity firm backing frontier technology companies. https://goannacapital.com/

  4. Jul 9

    From Sleeping in the Office to Landing Honeywell as a Customer | Tarek Alaruri, Stuut

    Tarek Alaruri is the founder of Stuut, an AI platform that helps businesses collect the money they're owed. Companies like Honeywell, PerkinElmer, and CharterUp use Stuut to automate accounts receivable end to end, collecting 40% more revenue in their first few months on the platform. But before Stuut, Tarek was a broke kid out of college who took a commission-only trucking job because a recruiter told him people there made $500K. He was the first one in the office and the last one out, sometimes sleeping there overnight, making up to 500 cold calls a day. One month in, he landed his first customer: a salt company selling to Midwest retailers. In this episode, Tarek and Rob get into why everything worth doing is hard, the fun of failure, reframing rejection as a next step, and why Stuut redesigned its entire platform after two years rather than risk falling behind. Follow Rob: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/ Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapital Very First Win is hosted by Robert Hilmer, founder of Goanna Capital, a private equity firm investing in generationally important frontier technology companies including SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, Databricks, and Neuralink.

  5. Jul 2

    He Counted Cards Until Casinos Banned Him. Then He Built SignalFire

    Chris Farmer got banned from casinos for counting cards. That same obsession with statistics and risk turned into SignalFire, the data-driven venture firm he founded in 2013. In this episode of Very First Win, Chris tells Robert Hilmer how a lucky blackjack run in college sent him down the rabbit hole of modeling the game with a UC Berkeley professor, playing semi pro for years, and learning when to lean in on a bad beat versus when to walk away. Those lessons became his framework for startup investing: is the deck backloaded, or are you just chasing losses? They also get into: How to know when to double down on a struggling company vs cut your losses The team, product, technology, timing framework for hard decisionsWhy agility is at a premium when no one can see more than a few months ahead How AI is reshaping startup teams, entry level hiring, and what a defensible moat even looks like now Chris previously worked at Bessemer Venture Partners and General Catalyst before launching SignalFire. Follow Robert Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/ Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapital

  6. Jun 25

    He Did 30 Pitches a Day in London With No Money. Then Got Into YC.

    Chaz Englander has built and sold two companies before most people figure out what they want to do. First was Fat Llama, a peer-to-peer rental marketplace that got into YC and sold for $45M. Then a last mile grocery delivery business he started three months before COVID that sold to GoPuff. Now he's building Model ML, a workflow automation platform for finance that raised $100M in its first year. In this episode, Chaz talks about doing 30 pitches a day in Canary Wharf for a £5K check, getting the YC acceptance call mid-Uber ride while sitting next to the driver, physically tracking down a stolen drone to save his first company, and what he means when he says perseverance has to be earned, not blind. What we cover: Why he started pitching strangers in Canary Wharf with no money and no tractionThe Uber ride where Aaron Harris called to say YC was inChasing a drone across London at 22 years old thinking the company was done"Getting into character" as a founder and what that actually means Why he and his brother started a third company after two successful exits Follow Chaz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chazenglander/ Follow Robert Hilmer: https://linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0cTzEJW3juIZEBnyswNl9c Listen on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027 Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapital

  7. Jun 18

    Andrew Parker (Papa Founder): He Almost Deleted His YC Interview Email

    Andrew Parker is the founder and CEO of Papa, the companion care platform pairing older adults with vetted "pals" who help with rides, tech, paperwork, and the thing nobody puts on a care plan: loneliness. In this episode, Andrew tells Rob about the moment that changed everything. He almost deleted the YC interview email at 5am, fished it out of his trash, and walked into a room where he was convinced everyone was smarter than him. Papa went on to become one of the hottest companies in its YC batch. We get into the bet that built the company (cutting bathing and toileting to scale companion care nationally), getting Medicare to cover a service that didn't exist five years ago, and why Andrew thinks you have to be a little irrational to build anything real. What we cover: The deleted YC email and the drive home convinced he'd lost Why he leaned into the two things he's great at and ignored the other 98% Building the "Uber of caregiving" by rethinking the rules Getting Medicare Advantage to cover companion care Being comfortable in the abyss and "absorbing" when things go against you Very First Win is hosted by Rob Hilmer, founder of Goanna Capital, and explores the early, defining moments behind the people building the future. Listen everywhere: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0cTzEJW3juIZEBnyswNl9c Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027 YouTube: @GoannaCapital Rob Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/ Andrew Parker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-parker-30904417/

  8. Jun 11

    Simone Giertz: The "Queen of S****y Robots" on Building a Real Company | Very First Win

    What happens when the internet's "Queen of S****y Robots" decides she wants to build something that outlasts the joke? In this episode of Very First Win, Rob Hilmer sits down with inventor, YouTuber, and founder Simone Giertz. She built a following of nearly 3 million on YouTube, first as the self-proclaimed "Queen of S****y Robots" with creations like an alarm clock that slaps you awake and a helmet that brushes your teeth, then with more ambitious and genuinely useful inventions. Now she's doing the hard thing: building Yetch Studio, a real product company that sells her designs to people who have no idea who she is. Simone's very first win isn't an IPO or a viral hit. It's the moment a stranger recognized her brand without recognizing her, proof that the business she spent years building can finally stand on its own. We get into: Why "s****y robots" was the perfect spear to go narrow and deep The brittleness of personality-based influencer businesses How to build a product company that's supported by you but not dependent on you Why every project should fit in a single headline (or a looping GIF with no audio) Land and expand: finding the one thing only you can do Listen to Very First Win: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027 YouTube: @GoannaCapital Connect: Robert Hilmer: https://linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/

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About

Success doesn't start with a headline. It starts with a first win. Very First Win takes you inside the exact moment top founders, investors, and operators realized they could actually make it. Each episode unpacks the deal, decision, or breakthrough that changed everything, and what that moment taught them. Hosted by Rob Hilmer of Goanna Capital, with guests spanning founders, investors, and industry leaders shaping what comes next. New episodes weekly.

Information

  • Creator
    Goanna Capital
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    18
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Goanna Capital
  • Show Website
    Very First Win