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Despite the fact that water covers 71% of the Earth, there is still so much we don’t know about the ocean floor and  today’s founder is looking to change that. Joe Wolfel is the co-founder and CEO of Terradepth, the company that is working towards increasing ocean knowledge through autonomous, high resolution, scalable data collection in the deep ocean. On this week’s episode of Found, Becca is joined by guest co-host, Tim De Chant to discuss why mapping geological features at the bottom of the ocean isn’t just something worth doing for curiosity’s sake, it’s important to a variety of players from companies looking to install offshore wind farms to the Navy. They also get into who is buying this kind of data, how Wolfel’s experience as a Navy Seal prepared him for entrepreneurship, and the trend of deeptech founders needing to find revenue streams early on as they’re developing their technology. 

The higher education system isn’t working. Students pay way too much, professors don’t get paid enough, and many community college students that aspire to go on to get a Bachelor's degree aren't able to. But one startup thinks they have the solution. Today Becca is talking with Tade Oyerinde, the CEO and founder of Campus, a fully accredited online community college. They discuss how Tade found a school that was willing to come on board and align with his mission, the challenges of getting investors on board, and what he thinks it will take to make the higher education system more equitable.

What is the right way to regulate AI? There appears to be as many different answers to that as there are regulators. In this week's episode of Found, we're bringing you a live interview from TechCrunch's recent Strictly VC event. Becca Szkutak talked with Helen Toner, the director of strategy and foundational research grants from the Center of Security and Emerging Technology and a former board member of OpenAI. Although she's not a founder herself, this conversation centers around topics crucial to every founder building today as AI continues to impact nearly every industry.

There are some companies that just have it, even if we can’t quite figure out what it is—and Masterclass is one of those companies, despite facing an onslaught of skepticism from the jump. Today on Found, we’re talking to David Rogier, the CEO and founder of MasterClass, a streaming platform where you can learn from the world’s experts on a variety of topics, from baking to screen writing to developing empathy. Before David launched MasterClass, he worked as a VC. Through his connections there received a $500,000 seed round before he even had an idea for a company. That was nearly a decade ago, and today Dom, Becca and David talk about how he’s built the company since.

It probably doesn’t come as too big of a surprise that cowboy boots aren’t typically sold online. So where is the modern cowboy supposed to shop? This week we’re talking to a founder who carved out a DTC market for western wear.  Paul Hedrick, the founder of Tecovas joins Dom and Becca to discuss the marketing strategy they came up with to change the perception of shopping for cowboy boots online and how the company has expanded to brick and mortar stores.

This week on Found, we have an interview from TechCrunch's Strictly VC event in DC. Becca sat down with Steve Case, the founder of AOL to discuss policy, innovation, and AI. Case, now the founder of Revolution Ventures, told the live audience that open access not only helped his company back in the 90s but is also why the internet was able to progress in the way that it did. Regulators should aim for the same goal with AI policy despite the potential risks. He argues that opening up access to horizontal AI players like OpenAI and Google would also help expand AI away from being concentrated on the coasts.