Fund/Build/Scale

Walter Thompson

After working for years in early-stage startups and as a journalist, here are three hard truths I’ve learned: 1. Success in Silicon Valley hinges on connections, hard work and luck. 2. Startups often fail because founders lack fundamental business knowledge. 3. Real, actionable advice comes from those who’ve actually done it. There’s no such thing as “founder DNA.” If you’re willing to take on risk and invest years of your life in something that has maybe a 10% chance of paying off — less if you’re a woman or person of color — you can be a startup founder. Here’s why I founded Fund/Build/Scale: 1. To help founders make fewer mistakes. 2. To share successful strategies that can accelerate your go-to-market journey. 3. To inspire more people to see themselves as potential founders. There’s a lot of overlooked talent out there, and we are missing out. This podcast is for anyone who’s interested in learning the basic skills required to launch a startup, secure initial funding and transform an idea into a sustainable business. I’m talking to guests about everything: finding a co-founder, conducting customer discovery, recruiting early employees, developing a PLG strategy, fundraising when you’re outside a major tech hub — all of it. Interested? Subscribe to Fund/Build/Scale on all major platforms and follow the podcast on LinkedIn to get articles, excerpts, transcripts and more. Fund/Build/Scale is a production of Truth and Soul Media LLC.

  1. Money Is the Only Customer Validation That Matters

    4d ago

    Money Is the Only Customer Validation That Matters

    Conventional wisdom says the hardest part of building a startup is building the product. Shanea Leven says the harder challenge is figuring out what customers will actually pay for. Before co-founding Empromptu.ai, Shanea spent more than 15 years building products at companies including Google, eBay, Docker, and Cloudflare. In this conversation, she explains why sales is every bit as complex as engineering, why customer interviews aren't enough to validate an idea, and why early-stage founders need to spend more time testing demand than perfecting roadmaps. We discuss the case-study approach she uses to find customers, the controversial belief that the only real product validation is money, and what happened when a LinkedIn post generated a 1,000-person waitlist almost overnight.  Shanea also shares how she used more than 100 customer calls to shape Empromptu’s direction, why she stopped fundraising when the company took  off, and the go-to-market challenges that still keep her up at night. If you're a technical founder trying to figure out whether you're building something people truly want, this episode offers a practical framework for separating genuine demand from wishful thinking. Listen to this episode if you're trying to figure out: why sales validation should happen before you commit to a roadmap how to find your first customers using the case study method what a viral waitlist can teach you about product-market fit how to distinguish customer feedback from customer demand why technical founders need to learn sales earlier than they think which early traction signals are worth trusting — and which aren't how to validate an idea before spending months building it RUNTIME 49:06   EPISODE BREAKDOWN (3:16) What Is Empromptu.ai, and Who Is it For? (6:25) Sales Is Just as Complicated as Engineering (8:14) The Case Study Method for Finding Early Customers (11:56) Why Al Is Rewriting the Product Playbook (13:37)   The Only Real Product Validation Is Money  (17:10) The S***ty Purple Website That Predicted Impromptu's Viral Launch (21:38) What 100 Waitlist Calls Taught Shanea About Customer Demand (26:28) "We evolved the platform." (34:57) "Ninety-nine percent of VCs are great at one thing." (36:20) The GTM Problem That Still Keeps Shanea Up at Night  (39:02) A Process for Selecting Your First Sales/Marketing Hires (40:59) Why She'd Hire a "Scrappy" Marketer Over a Former Meta Employee "Every Time" (44:05) The Early Traction Signal She No Longer Trusts (45:28) A 30-day Experiment Founders Can Run To Validate Their Idea LINKS Shanea Leven Empromptu.ai Empromptu raises $2M pre-seed to help enterprises build AI apps, 12/9/2025, TechCrunch SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/   📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/   📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!  – Walter

    49 min
  2. What Hospitals Are Actually Buying in the AI Boom

    4d ago

    What Hospitals Are Actually Buying in the AI Boom

    If you're building a startup, there are easier industries to choose than healthcare. Sales cycles are long, regulations are complex, and earning the trust of providers and patients takes years. In this episode, Mayo Clinic Platform Accelerate Director Jamie Sundsbak explains how healthtech founders can improve their odds of success. We discuss what Mayo looks for in founding teams, why the program focuses on product development instead of fundraising, how startups use clinical data and physician feedback to refine AI products, and what healthcare systems are actually buying in today's market. Jamie also shares lessons from reviewing hundreds of startup applications, the founding team profiles that stand out, why some companies gain traction while others stall, and what founders should know before building in one of the world's most regulated industries. Listen to this episode if you're trying to figure out: What Mayo Clinic looks for in healthtech founders How to use customer feedback to improve AI products Why some healthcare startups gain traction while others struggle What health systems are actually buying in the AI boom How to navigate the long road from MVP to clinical adoption Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/whrR0IVHEOY RUNTIME 38:35   EPISODE BREAKDOWN (1:39) What Mayo Clinic Looks for in Early-Stage Healthtech Startups (13:31) How Mayo Uses Clinical Data and Physician Feedback to Improve Products (23:50) The Art of Creating Provider FOMO (25:32) The Ideal Healthtech Founding Team (29:29) Why OpenEvidence Won — and What Hospitals Are Buying Today (36:03) Healthcare Is Hard. Here's Why Founders Keep Choosing It Anyway LINKS Jamie Sundsbak Mayo Clinic Platform Accelerate Most U.S. doctors are quietly using this AI tool. Few patients know about it, NBC News, 5/13/2026 SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!  – Walter

    39 min
  3. The 10x Rule: Turning a Research Paper into an AI Company

    Jun 10

    The 10x Rule: Turning a Research Paper into an AI Company

    Most startup advice assumes the biggest challenge is finding customers. But what happens when the demand is obvious and the real question is whether the technology can actually work at scale? In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I sit down with Stanford professor and Inception Labs founder and CEO Stefano Ermon to discuss how a breakthrough research paper evolved into a venture-backed AI company serving enterprise customers. Stefano explains why his team believed they needed a 10x advantage in speed, cost, or quality to compete with industry giants, and how they convinced investors to back an idea that was still largely unproven. We explore the realities of building a deep-tech startup, including raising capital before product-market fit, assembling a world-class founding team, learning enterprise sales as a first-time CEO, pricing a new category of technology, and competing with companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Along the way, Stefano shares practical advice for technical founders trying to transform research into a business, de-risk ambitious ideas, and create evidence that investors can believe in before the market fully understands what they're building. In this episode: Why startups need a 10x advantage to stand out Turning a research paper into a venture-backed company Raising capital when the biggest risk is technical, not market demand Why Inception Labs built before talking to customers Learning enterprise sales as a first-time founder The challenge of pricing a fundamentally new technology What happened when Google announced its own diffusion models How deep-tech founders can de-risk ideas before fundraising The hiring lesson Stefano wishes he had learned earlier 📺 Watch this episode on YouTube  RUNTIME 46:03 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (0:00) From Research Paper to Startup (2:11) Why AI Is So Expensive (4:34) Turning Research into a Company (7:47) The Bet Behind Inception Labs (9:01) Raising Money for an Unproven Idea (12:24) Building the Right Team (14:27) Dividing Founder Roles (16:32) Building Before Customers (20:07) When Customers Started Calling (21:47) Learning to Sell (25:04) Pricing a New Category (26:34) The Wrong First Customers (31:16) Why Startups Can Beat Giants (34:04) The 10x Rule for Startup Differentiation (39:20) Building a Durable AI Company (41:03) How to De-Risk a Deep Tech Startup (42:40) The First 90 Days After Funding (43:54) One Founder Lesson He Learned Too Late LINKS Stefano Ermon Inception Labs What Are Diffusion Models?, Stanford HAI Inception raises $50 million to build diffusion models for code and text, TechCrunch, 11/6/2025 SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/   📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/   📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!  – Walter.

    46 min
  4. Your First Marketing Hire Is Probably Not a CMO

    Jun 5

    Your First Marketing Hire Is Probably Not a CMO

    Most technical founders can explain how their product works. Far fewer can clearly explain why a customer should care. In this episode, Cribl CMO Abby Strong shares what she has learned from building go-to-market teams and helping scale one of the fastest-growing companies in data infrastructure. Drawing on her background in IT operations, product, and marketing, Abby explains why founders often struggle with messaging, how to know when you've found product-market fit, and what it takes to build demand before you have a large team or budget. We also discuss category creation, customer discovery, the early signals that the market is pulling your product, and why your first marketing hire is probably not a CMO. Watch this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9TnFwRgy2fw RUNTIME 45:19   EPISODE BREAKDOWN [3:56] Why Technical Founders Struggle With Marketing [09:58] When Should You Hire Your First Marketer? [11:29] Marketing Before You Have A Marketing Team [13:46] Why Marketing Takes Longer Than Founders Expect [19:35] Your First Marketing Hire Is Probably Not A CMO [25:23] Turning Features Into Outcomes [27:15] Four Questions Every Founder Must Answer [28:57] How To Understand A Technical Product [32:44] Building Cribl's GTM Engine [36:46] When The Market Starts Pulling [42:09] Build Trust Before You Chase Scale LINKS Abby Strong (LinkedIn) Cribl SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/   📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/   📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!    – Walter

    45 min
  5. How AI-Native Startups Actually Get Built

    May 20

    How AI-Native Startups Actually Get Built

    What does it actually mean to build an AI-native company? In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I talk with True Ventures Managing Partner Puneet Agarwal and Gather CEO/co-founder Mayank Mehta about how the startup evolved from an AI-powered customer feedback idea into a broader research and content platform for marketing teams. We get into founder conviction before product-market fit, what investors actually look for when there’s little external signal, how the company reshaped its go-to-market strategy after realizing the original motion wasn’t working, and why Mayank rebuilt major parts of the business around AI workflows in real time. There’s also a very tactical discussion about customer discovery, early hiring, AI-native operations, and a weekend growth experiment that produced more meetings in two weeks than the previous year of outbound efforts combined. RUNTIME 51:33 EPISODE BREAKDOWN 03:18 What True Ventures Looks For at Seed 07:00 What Gather Actually Does 11:42 The Five-Slide Seed Pitch 17:21 What They Got Wrong Early 21:06 Rebuilding the Company Around AI 33:53 The Weekend GTM Experiment That Changed the Company 36:56 How Investors Read Founders Who Don’t Have Signal 41:15 Tactical Advice for First-Time Founders 49:18 One Experiment Founders Can Run This Week LINKS Puneet Agarwal Mayank Mehta Gather True Ventures Gather Growth Platform SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/   📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/   📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!  – Walter

    52 min
  6. Why Great Founders Are “Angry at the Problem”

    May 19

    Why Great Founders Are “Angry at the Problem”

    For this episode, I interviewed Eugene Malobrodsky, partner at One Way Ventures and former founder of AnchorFree, the company behind HotSpot Shield, one of the first consumer VPN products to scale globally. Before becoming a VC, Eugene spent 15 years building and scaling a startup through the 2008 financial crisis, painful layoffs, difficult fundraising environments, and the long grind from idea to acquisition.  Today, he backs immigrant founders building applied AI, deep tech, fintech, healthcare, and enterprise startups at the pre-seed and seed stage. Topics include: Why many founders become founders for the wrong reasons What venture capitalists really mean when they talk about “100x outcomes” How to think about fundraising runway and dilution Why technical founders often struggle with storytelling What makes a startup venture-backable versus a profitable lifestyle business The most common mistakes early technical teams make How investors evaluate first-time founders with no track record Why customer discovery matters more than building features too early Why the best founders are often “angry at the problem” they’re trying to solve He also spoke about what immigrant entrepreneurs misunderstand about networking in Silicon Valley, and the growing uncertainty around H-1B visas and startup immigration policy. RUNTIME 56:28   EPISODE BREAKDOWN (2:13) "I'm just not great at following directions and working for somebody else." (5:44) How Working in VC Changed His Thinking (7:42) What Founders Misunderstand About VC Funds (20:53) A Practical Framework for Seed-stage Fundraising (25:50) What Makes Him Take the Meeting (31:19) Where One Way Ventures is Betting in Deep Tech  (35:11) The Most Common Mistakes Technical Teams Make (38:23) Why Founders Need a 90-second Story (43:16) Growing Uncertainty for Immigrant Tech Workers and Founders (51:33) Practical Networking Advice for First-time Founders (54:38) The One Question H1-B Candidates Should Ask the CEO During an Interview LINKS Eugene Malobrodsky One Way Ventures Investing in Funds vs Investing as an Angel One Way Ventures Expands to San Francisco from Boston with Eugene Malobrodsky, Co-founder of Consumer Privacy Company AnchorFree, Joining as Partner SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/   📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/   📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!  – Walter

    56 min
  7. Before There Is Proof: Build a Startup Story That Shows You Can Execute

    May 6

    Before There Is Proof: Build a Startup Story That Shows You Can Execute

    A lot of early-stage founders can explain their company five different ways — and all five might be technically correct. The problem is that often, those answers don’t fully line up. That gap in a startup’s narrative creates friction.  Investors may understand the problem but still don’t feel like the story lands. Candidates may understand the product, but they’re not fully on board with the mission. Customers may hear the explanation but still struggle to repeat it clearly. I’ve been inside meetings where the CTO described the company’s core value one way and the CEO had a different take. In this episode, I break down the “narrative gap”: the distance between what a founder knows and what everyone else understands.  I explain why technical founders often struggle to communicate even when they deeply understand their business and share several diagnostic frameworks you can use to test whether your story gives customers, investors, hires, and reporters confidence that you can execute. RUNTIME 16:55   EPISODE BREAKDOWN (1:52) Narrative is Not Decorative. Narrative is Load-bearing. (3:30) Founder Diagnostics: 3 Questions That Pressure-test Your Story (4:49) Your Message Is Not Your Pitch (6:06) A Bridge Is Not A Destination (7:42) Find The One Thing That Carries The Most Weight (8:57) Ask, "What breaks without you?" (10:30) Separate History From Story (11:25) What's the First Sentence of Your Startup's Story? (12:12) Pressure-test Your First Sentence In Different Rooms (13:59) Putting It Together: Final Founder-narrative Diagnostic (15:11) Use This Episode To Start Framing Your Narrative   I work with early-stage founders on narrative framing, media prep, fundraising communication, and public-facing storytelling. This is foundational work that helps your message hold up before investors, customers, candidates, reporters, and conference audiences. If you’re getting ready to raise, hire, pitch, launch, or speak publicly, reach out: fundbuildscale@gmail.com SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/   📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/   📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!    – Walter.

    17 min
  8. How to Hire Your First Offshore Team Without Screwing It Up

    Apr 28

    How to Hire Your First Offshore Team Without Screwing It Up

    Hiring is one of the hardest things for first-time founders to get right, especially if you’re building a distributed team that spans the globe. For this episode, I spoke to Isaac Saul Kassab, co-founder of Pearl Talent, a recruiting firm that helps startups hire offshore teams. We break down the underlying hiring frameworks founders can actually use, whether you’re hiring locally or globally. We get into how to write tighter job descriptions, evaluating candidates beyond their resumes, and why so many founders waste time interviewing the wrong people. Isaac also walks through how he thinks about onboarding as a filtering mechanism and why early hiring mistakes are often unavoidable (but manageable if you move quickly). If you’re building your first team — or trying to fix a hiring process that just isn’t working — this episode gives you a practical starting point. How to define a role around outcomes instead of responsibilities Why you should cut 30–40% from your job description before you post it The interview questions that surface real signal (and filter out noise) How to assess curiosity, coachability, and long-term fit Why onboarding should be designed to expose failure early The most common mistakes founders make when hiring offshore What kind of hiring failure rate to expect as a first-time founder RUNTIME 31:31 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (3:32) The Hiring Problem That Created Pearl Talent (9:56) How to Fix a Broken Hiring Process (Sourcing, Vetting, Onboarding) (14:08) How to Evaluate Candidates Beyond the Resume (17:25) Why Most Founders Hire the Wrong People (22:05) “If You Don’t Invest in the Person, You Get Failure” (25:29) Your First Offshore Hire: Start by Working Backwards (28:18) A Simple Hiring Playbook You Can Use Tomorrow LINKS Pearl Talent Isaac Saul Kassab Monty Ngan SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw   Thanks for listening!    – Walter

    32 min
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4.9
out of 5
29 Ratings

About

After working for years in early-stage startups and as a journalist, here are three hard truths I’ve learned: 1. Success in Silicon Valley hinges on connections, hard work and luck. 2. Startups often fail because founders lack fundamental business knowledge. 3. Real, actionable advice comes from those who’ve actually done it. There’s no such thing as “founder DNA.” If you’re willing to take on risk and invest years of your life in something that has maybe a 10% chance of paying off — less if you’re a woman or person of color — you can be a startup founder. Here’s why I founded Fund/Build/Scale: 1. To help founders make fewer mistakes. 2. To share successful strategies that can accelerate your go-to-market journey. 3. To inspire more people to see themselves as potential founders. There’s a lot of overlooked talent out there, and we are missing out. This podcast is for anyone who’s interested in learning the basic skills required to launch a startup, secure initial funding and transform an idea into a sustainable business. I’m talking to guests about everything: finding a co-founder, conducting customer discovery, recruiting early employees, developing a PLG strategy, fundraising when you’re outside a major tech hub — all of it. Interested? Subscribe to Fund/Build/Scale on all major platforms and follow the podcast on LinkedIn to get articles, excerpts, transcripts and more. Fund/Build/Scale is a production of Truth and Soul Media LLC.

Information

  • Creator
    Walter Thompson
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2026
  • Episodes
    119
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Produced by Truth and Soul Media LLC. Copyright 2026 | All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Fund/Build/Scale