Proof of Possible

Margaret Weniger
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Entrepreneurship

Proof of Possible is a podcast for aspiring entrepreneurs, startup founders, and the people who help them build what's next. Hosted by Margaret Weniger, Director of CREATE-X Launch at Georgia Tech, Proof of Possible brings you honest conversations with founders and industry experts about what it really takes to build, launch, scale, and lead a successful startup. Hear the startup stories behind the wins, pivots, setbacks, and defining decisions that shape the entrepreneurial journey. Alongside real-world founder experiences, industry experts share practical insights and actionable advice on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, building and scaling startups, leadership, and navigating the challenges of growing an early-stage company. Whether you're exploring an idea, building your first startup, scaling your next venture, or mentoring the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, Proof of Possible will help you learn from those who have gone before and see what's possible for yourself.

Episodes

  1. 3d ago

    What Angel Investors Really Look For | Steven Lustig

    A startup can have a compelling idea, a polished pitch deck, and a passionate founder—and still not be ready for investment. What does an angel investor see that a founder might miss? On this episode of Proof Of Possible, host Margaret Weniger speaks with Steven Lustig, an angel investor with Atlanta Technology Angels whose background spans manufacturing, supply chains, operations, and work at Coca-Cola. Steven takes listeners behind the scenes of early-stage investing: what angels do, where they fit between friends-and-family funding and venture capital, and why investor groups can bring more than a check. They explore the questions investors ask about customer demand, traction, competition, market size, realistic forecasts, valuation, and the founder’s ability to execute. The conversation moves beyond fundraising into the decisions that determine whether a startup can scale: adapting company culture, putting the right processes in place, delegating as a founder, resisting “shiny object syndrome,” and weighing the opportunity cost of revenue that pulls the business off course. For founders preparing to raise capital—or trying to build a more durable company—this episode offers a practical look at how to think from both sides of the investment table. What you’ll learnWhere angel investors fit in the startup funding journeyWhat a clear, credible pitch needs to explainHow to balance a big market vision with believable forecasts and valuationWhat investors look for in founders and complementary teamsWhen to add structure, delegate, or reconsider the CEO roleWhy not all revenue is good revenue—and how to assess opportunity costHow to evaluate AI differentiation beyond the labelTimestamps: 07:07 — Market size, competition, differentiation and AI startups 09:14 — What angel investors are and when they invest 11:05 — What makes a pitch clear, honest and credible 16:51 — ATA’s screening cycle and timing a fundraising approach 18:36 — Customer traction and the problems investors want solved 25:02 — When founders should delegate or consider succession 27:16 — Culture, processes and systems that enable scale 31:01 — Opportunity cost: why not all revenue is good revenue 38:38 — Typical ATA investment sizes and realistic valuations 47:02 — Final advice: don’t be afraid of angel investors Follow CREATE-X: Instagram → @gtcreatex LinkedIn → www.linkedin.com/company/create-x/ YouTube → @create-xatgeorgiatech4110

  2. Oct 28

    How to Find Your First Five Design Partners—and Get Paid | Quentin Barrial

    What if the smartest thing a founder can do before building a product is ask a customer to pay for it? In this episode of Proof It Possible, host Margaret Weniger sits down with serial entrepreneur Quentin Barrial to unpack design partnerships: the close, collaborative relationships that help founders understand a customer’s problem, test a solution, and establish real commitment before spending months building the wrong thing. Quentin explains why a Google Form and a spreadsheet can be enough to test demand, why design partners are different from pilots, and why free work often produces weaker feedback than a paid engagement. Margaret and Quentin get practical about identifying the right partner, choosing a metric your solution can actually move, documenting scope and pricing, setting timelines and meeting cadences, and handling pivots when a more urgent problem emerges. They also explore the signals that a partnership is working, the danger of feature creep, and how to say no without damaging trust. For founders trying to move from customer discovery to a product people genuinely want, this conversation offers a grounded framework for learning faster, charging earlier, and building with customers rather than in isolation. What you’ll learn What a design partnership is—and how it differs from a pilot or consultingWhy charging early creates stronger customer commitment and more candid feedbackHow to choose a success metric that your product can influence and attributeHow to spot prospective partners who feel the problem urgentlyWhat to put in writing: scope, expectations, price, and payment termsHow to set partnership duration and communication cadenceWhen to pivot, how to recognize success, and why saying no prevents feature creepFollow CREATE-X: Instagram → @gtcreatex LinkedIn → www.linkedin.com/company/create-x/ YouTube → @create-xatgeorgiatech4110

  3. Oct 21

    From Two Months of Runway to Taking on Legacy ERP | Tim Felbinger| StartProto

    Half the product wasn’t even finished when StartProto made its first sale. Its report pages were raw, pink JSON, and the customer learned to read them. In this episode of Proof It Possible, host Margaret Weniger sits down with Tim Felbinger, founder and CEO of StartProto, the Atlanta-based manufacturing software company now moving up market to challenge legacy ERP systems. Margaret and Tim dig into the hard parts: the times the company almost died, how a two-month runway forced a go-to-market rethink, why holding onto the free trial too long cost larger deals, how he decides between data and gut, and what it took to move from doing every discovery call himself to running a company that mostly runs without him. They also cover how AI changed what a small team can build, including a full accounting suite in about three months, and why Tim still spends 15 hours a week in Figma. If you’re building for a niche most people overlook, deciding when to move up market, or learning to hand off work you love, this conversation offers an honest look at how a small, customer-obsessed team can build a venture-scale company. What you'll learn: How to explain a complex product in one analogy anyone can follow How to prioritize product features by tracking which missing feature blocks each deal What to polish and what to leave rough in a first product Why a free trial that works early can quietly disqualify your biggest customers later How AI speeds up building while design and data structures still need a human hand How to move from founder-led to CEO-led, and how to hire and onboard for it Why obsessing over the customer, not the product, can change what you end up building Timestamps 02:19 - Explaining StartProto with a pizza: purchase planning and scheduling as “a big calculator” 07:34 - The CREATE-X capstone: aiming to win, two weeks of calls about fire sprinklers in jails, and second place 10:22 - “We’ve almost died multiple times”: the makerspace pivot, a first customer, and hitting the ERP wall 13:33 - Near-death #1: two months of runway and the product-led growth rescue 14:43 - Prioritizing 15 modules by one question: what can we sell? 17:17 - Why a graph-based core works so well with AI agents, and customers running modules “headless” through chat 23:10 - 15 hours a week in Figma: why design still matters when AI can write the code 27:29 - What backfired: holding onto the free trial for too long 28:49 - Why self-serve disqualified bigger deals: 60+ feature toggles and white-glove customer success 31:04 - Data vs. gut: five lost deals and turning the free trial off 31:49 - From founder-led to CEO-led: letting go of discovery calls and making the first sales hire 38:39 - Raising capital: an October 2021 round, a first check after the first customer, and “go shop it around” 48:10 - Advice for new founders: obsess over the customer, not the product 49:57 - Moving up market: from $20–30K deals to $100K+ Follow CREATE-X: Instagram → @gtcreatex LinkedIn → www.linkedin.com/company/create-x/ YouTube → @create-xatgeorgiatech4110

  4. Oct 15

    From Garage to Global Company | Curt Lary | Hextronics

    Curt Lary, founder and CEO of Hextronics, explains how a mechanical engineering capstone became a global drone-automation company. He covers early inventions, 100+ investor rejections, and why he sees problems as a path, not a wall.

  5. Sep 30

    Bootstrapping a Mission-Driven Startup | Walter Ley

    What happens when your primary users will never pay you a dime — but the mission still has to become a real business? In this episode of Proof It Possible, host Margaret Weniger talks with Walter Ley, a Georgia Tech alum, Techstars founder, and the founder of Branch Politics, a free platform that helps voters get informed on every race on their ballot, not just the headline elections. Walter walks through the origin of Branch Politics after the 2016 election, the six months of open-ended interviews that surfaced the real problem (nobody knows who their down-ballot judges are), the scrappy MVP he built as a podcast-style voter guide, and the pivot to a text-based product that could actually scale. He and Margaret dig into why he chose to bootstrap instead of raise venture capital, how two separate revenue streams — nonprofit partnerships and, later, media/newsroom partnerships — found him rather than the other way around, and why patience turned out to be the hardest and most important skill in building a mission-driven company over seven years. Whether you're weighing a full-time leap, wondering if your idea can be a business without a paying end user, or just tired of the “raise, scale, exit” startup script, this conversation offers a grounded alternative path. What you'll learn: How to test a hypothesis through open-ended interviews before committing to a solutionHow Walter decided it was time to leave his full-time job and go all-in (and how he time-boxed the risk)Why the real product insight often comes from an offhand comment, not a direct questionHow Branch Politics built two separate revenue streams — nonprofits and media newsrooms — while keeping the platform free for votersWhy he chose not to raise venture capital, and what a public benefit corporation structure means in practiceWhy startups often take 10–15 years, not 2–3, and how to build the patience for thatFollow CREATE-X: Instagram → @gtcreatex LinkedIn → www.linkedin.com/company/create-x/ YouTube → @create-xatgeorgiatech4110

  6. Sep 23

    Customer Discovery, Demystified: How to Talk to Customers Without the Guesswork | Melissa Heffner

    Every founder thinks they know what their customer wants — until they actually ask. In this episode of Proof of Possible, host Margaret Weniger sits down with Melissa Heffner, Associate Director at Georgia Tech's VentureLab, who has coached over 1,000 startups through the customer discovery process. Melissa breaks down why customer discovery isn't the same as sales, how to figure out what someone will actually pay before you ever ask them directly, and why “neutral” is the worst reaction you can get from a potential customer. She and Margaret cover how to build a project thesis and testable hypotheses before your first conversation, how many questions you actually need (hint: fewer than you think), why she discourages recording interviews or paying people to talk to you, and creative ways to find people to talk to — from LinkedIn network hacks to loitering in trade show hotel lobbies. Whether you're a first-time founder or already deep into building, this conversation offers a practical, no-fluff framework for getting out of the building and finding out if what you're building is something people actually want. What you'll learn: Why customer discovery has to happen before sales conversations, not alongside themHow to gauge pricing without directly asking “what would you pay?”A practical channel strategy for finding people to interview (and why you should expect to send ~30 outreach messages per 3 real conversations)How to build a project thesis and hypotheses so your interviews have directionWhy fewer, open-ended questions beat a rigid scriptThe single biggest red flag in a customer conversationHow to know when you've learned enough to start building Episode Timestamps: 01:39 Why customer discovery matters, even when you already believe in your idea03:00 Breaking discovery into a manageable first step instead of a huge, scary task 04:01 Why reports and secondary research aren't a substitute for talking to people 05:18 Customer discovery vs. sales discovery — why founders shouldn't skip to selling 07:03 How to figure out pricing before you ever ask “what would you pay?” 08:17 Does the process change for B2C vs. B2B vs. B2B2C? (Short answer: not much) 09:03 Best channels for reaching people — surveys, soft intros, LinkedIn, cold email, and the “send 30” rule 12:42 How to approach strangers “in the wild” without being weird about it 14:24 Building a project thesis and hypotheses before you start interviewing anyone 17:38 How many questions to actually bring into an interview 21:03 Getting practice reps in before you burn a real customer conversation 22:53 How your questions should evolve as you learn more 24:42 Should you record interviews? Why Melissa says no 26:28 Is it OK to pay people (e.g. gift cards) to talk to you? 27:48 Other ways to find people to talk to: trade shows, conferences, hotel lobbies 30:04 The LinkedIn network hack for getting warm introductions 33:50 How you know it's finally time to start building 35:58 Making the transition from discovery conversations to sales conversations 37:08 Rapid-fire round Follow CREATE-X: Instagram → @gtcreatex LinkedIn → www.linkedin.com/company/create-x/ YouTube → @create-xatgeorgiatech4110

  7. Sep 16

    MVPs and Pivots: Insights from a Serial Entrepreneur | Seth Radman, Founder of Loop

    In this episode of Proof of Possible, Margaret Weniger sits down with Seth Radman, a four-time founder, startup coach, CREATE-X alum, and two-time successful exit founder, to unpack one of the biggest challenges facing early-stage entrepreneurs: knowing what to build, when to pivot, and when to stay the course. Seth shares lessons from building dozens of products and running countless experiments, including his journey from Georgia Tech student and first-time founder to repeat entrepreneur. He explains how to use MVPs and rapid experiments to test assumptions, de-risk decisions, interpret customer feedback, and avoid spending months building something nobody wants. From knowing when to "grit or quit" to finding your first five customers, Seth offers a practical framework for turning uncertainty into learning—and learning into action. What You’ll Learn: How to know when to build, pivot, or quit — Learn how Seth evaluates whether to stay the course, change direction, or walk away from an idea.Why your MVP should be an experiment, not a finished product — Discover how to test your biggest assumptions without spending months building something that may not work.How to design faster, smarter experiments — Learn Seth's approach to identifying the single most important unknown and finding the fastest way to get meaningful evidence.How to use customer feedback without simply building what customers ask for — Understand how to dig beneath what customers say they want to uncover the problem they're actually experiencing.How to overcome the fear of launching too early — Learn why emotional attachment and fear of failure can lead founders to overbuild—and practical ways to separate your identity from the outcome.How to find your first customers — Hear Seth's unconventional approach to getting those first users, from cold calls and flyers to simply starting with the people already in your community.Why early-stage startups should focus on learning, not proving they're right — Explore Seth's philosophy that startups are "experiment factories" and that even a failed experiment can be a win if it produces valuable insight. Episode Timestamps: 05:12 Understanding the Zero to One Stage 09:28 Knowing When to Grit and When to Quit 12:17 Leveraging Learnings During Pivots 16:13 De-risking Decisions in Startups 21:40 Overcoming MVP Pushbacks and Launching Quickly 25:08 The Importance of Patience in Startups 26:17 Defining What to Learn from MVPs 29:55 Customer Feedback: Listening vs. Acting 41:38 The Art of Failing Well 42:12 Determining Success: User Metrics 44:52 Getting Your First Customers 48:06 Taking Action: The First Step Follow CREATE-X: Instagram → @gtcreatex LinkedIn → www.linkedin.com/company/create-x/ YouTube → @create-xatgeorgiatech4110

  8. Sep 2

    Proof of Possible Trailer

    Welcome to Proof of Possible, the podcast from CREATE-X at Georgia Tech. In this special trailer episode, you'll get a glimpse into the founders, stories, and conversations ahead. Hear why CREATE-X believes entrepreneurship is for anyone willing to take the leap—and preview insights from founders and experts who have navigated the challenges of building something from the ground up. Whether you're exploring an idea, building your first startup, or growing your next venture, this is your invitation to join us and discover what's possible.

  • 8 Episodes

About

Proof of Possible is a podcast for aspiring entrepreneurs, startup founders, and the people who help them build what's next. Hosted by Margaret Weniger, Director of CREATE-X Launch at Georgia Tech, Proof of Possible brings you honest conversations with founders and industry experts about what it really takes to build, launch, scale, and lead a successful startup. Hear the startup stories behind the wins, pivots, setbacks, and defining decisions that shape the entrepreneurial journey. Alongside real-world founder experiences, industry experts share practical insights and actionable advice on entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, building and scaling startups, leadership, and navigating the challenges of growing an early-stage company. Whether you're exploring an idea, building your first startup, scaling your next venture, or mentoring the entrepreneurs of tomorrow, Proof of Possible will help you learn from those who have gone before and see what's possible for yourself.

Information

  • Creator
    Margaret Weniger
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    8
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Margaret Weniger
  • Show Website
    Proof of Possible