Very First Win

Goanna Capital

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. 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.

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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/

  5. 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/

  6. Jun 4

    How One Researcher at a Conference Landed a $100M Microsoft Deal | Mitesh Agrawal, CEO of Positron

    Mitesh Agrawal, CEO of Positron, joins Robert Hilmer on Very First Win to talk about building AI silicon for frontier inference workloads, coexisting with Nvidia, and the two challenges that define the chip game: talent and supply chain. Then he gets into his very first win, the $100M+ deal that taught him how to sell into a multi-trillion dollar company as a startup worth a fraction of that. The secret? It wasn't a CEO or a CTO. It was one Microsoft researcher at NeurIPS 2018 whose team bulldozed through every red tape Positron's predecessor company would have otherwise hit. If you're not in front of people, you don't exist. Listen to Very First Win: 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 Connect: Robert Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/

  7. May 28

    Jason Fried on Getting Told He Sucked, His First $20, and Landing a $100K Gig Solo | Very First Win

    Jason Fried, founder of 37signals (Basecamp, HEY), joins Robert Hilmer on Very First Win.Jason has built one of the most well-known bootstrapped software companies of the last 25+ years. 27 years of profitability, ~60 people, zero VC money on purpose. In this episode he shares three early moments that shaped how he thinks about building: the rejection that lit a fire under him, his first $20 ever made from software (mailed from a stranger in Germany), and landing a $100K Getty Images project as a solo freelancer.Follow Very First WinSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0cTzEJW3juIZEBnyswNl9c?si=674c885122c64a70Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/very-first-win/id1896315027YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GoannaCapitalRobert Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/

  8. May 21

    The Youngest Tech Unicorn Founder in History | Samir Vasavada, Founder of Vise AI

    In this episode of Very First Win, Robert Hilmer sits down with Samir Vasavada, founder of Vise AI and the youngest tech unicorn founder in history. Samir started Vise at 15 years old in Cleveland, Ohio, dropped out of high school, and moved to San Francisco with no money, eventually living in the Crypto Castle while bootstrapping the company. Vise is now an AI-powered investment platform that helps financial advisors build personalized portfolios for their clients, with over $50 billion in assets on the platform. Samir walks through the very first win that changed everything: raising his seed round from Founders Fund after three years of grinding, cold emailing investors, sleeping on his co-founder's dorm room mattress topper at UPenn, and refusing to leave until he could convince him to drop out. Listen to Very First Win: 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 Follow:Robert Hilmer: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberthilmer/ #VeryFirstWin #ViseAI #StartupFounder #VentureCapital #ai

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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
    15
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Goanna Capital
  • Show Website
    Very First Win