The Seen

Kaia Tham
  • 0.0 (0)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Biweekly

Forget overnight success. These are the real stories behind visionary entrepreneurs, brand disruptors, and creative minds who make themselves seen. Hosted by Kaia Tham, The Seen dives into raw marketing strategy, risky business moves, and breakthrough tactics that drive real growth. If you want to build disruptive brands, crush your market, and make a lasting impact, this is your playbook, straight from some of the most successful entrepreneurs.

  1. 5d ago

    He sold $10k in 3 weeks with no product... and now it makes over 6-figures

    Brian Hamor built a cleaning business in 3 days to fund his real startup. That company, BuyerExperience, is now doing over six figures and growing. But getting there wasn’t a straight line: two years making zero dollars at his first company (now at over 7 figures), a co-founder who tried to blackmail him out of equity, and a $10k sale he closed in 3 weeks before the product even existed. In this episode of The Seen, we dive into: - How to sell before you’ve built anything (and why you should) - The exact cold-DM method he used to land a dream job with no experience - What you need to consider before deciding whether to bootstrap or raise (that VCs won’t tell you) - Why he’s never applied to a company in his life (and what he does instead) - How he built a passive service business (in 3 days!) that makes him $60-80k a year Follow Brian: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianhamor/ Show notes: (0:00) Trailer (1:05) Welcome Brian Hamor to The Seen (1:21) From pro basketball to founder (2:37) Medical sales to software: starting a company he knew nothing about (3:49) Finding the real problem (and why it wasn't the one they started with) (4:50) The confidence to leave a stable job for the unknown (5:34) Two years, zero dollars: what building with no traction actually feels like (6:57) The pivot that saved Play Easy (and how COVID accelerated it) (9:52) Why they skipped VC (10:26) The first deal: $15K ARR sold off an idea (13:54) Leaving Play Easy for "skill acquisition mode" (17:34) Studying buyer psychology instead of sales books (20:22) The Bezos principle: building fundamentals before layering on AI (21:53) The cold-DM method that landed his first sales job (23:32) His framework for prepping for any meeting (26:06) The Uber Eats analogy that led to BuyerExperience (27:47) 80% of deals close "lost"- and nobody knows why (28:23) From live interviews to AI surveys at scale (32:58) Staying "oddly confident" through 2 years of building (33:47) Three failed co-founder searches (and a blackmail attempt) (35:15) The non-technical founder's playbook: hire the architecture first (37:12) Selling off a Figma file before writing a line of code (38:21) Building a cleaning company in 3 days for cash flow (41:08) Why service businesses are so hard to scale (42:17) BuyerExperience crosses six figures (42:33) The scene is yours

  2. Aug 3

    He built the #1 app in the world (and in 6 weeks sold it for $200M)

    Dan Porter sold his first company to Ticketmaster for $40 million with his college roommate. Then he built the #1 game in the world, right when his company was on the brink of failure. At that point, he wasn’t even a game designer himself, but his app DrawSomething was downloaded a quarter of a billion times. Within 6 weeks of launching it, he’d sold it for $200 million. Now he’s the co-founder and CEO of Overtime, a media company with over 115 million followers that’s raised over $100 million, with investors including Jeff Bezos, Drake, and dozens of NBA players. Oh and in his spare time, he just helped a 17-year-old basketball player turn the “67” meme into one of the most followed water brands ever. In this episode of TheSeen, we dive into: - How he negotiated from a $120M acquisition to $200M - How NOT selling Overtime merchandise led to tens of millions of dollars - The one filter that will tell you whether an idea is worth pursuing or investing in - The unconventional growth strategy (including purposefully trolling your fans in the comments) that got Overtime over 115M followers - Why he told his boss not to invest in ideas that looked like the next big thing (and was right) Follow Dan: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danporter/ Overtime - https://overtime.tv/ Show notes: (0:00) Trailer (1:08) The journey of Dan Porter- from teacher to entrepreneur (2:12) The importance of customer development (21:12) Not your typical game designer (27:38) $50M term sheet vs $200M acquisition (33:34) Making fun the culture (36:57) WME & creating the basis of the creator economy (42:25) Investing in Glossier, Masterclass, Splice... (45:44) The start of Overtime (50:03) Overtime's revenue streams (53:27) 67 Water (56:24) >115M followers (58:40) The scene is yours

  3. Feb 27

    From Snapchat to building the future of AI dating

    Eric McHugh quit his consulting job with no backup plan and went all-in on crypto back before most had even heard of Bitcoin. Since then, he’s built in Web3, worked inside one of the world’s top startup incubators, and is now building Dataing- an AI-powered platform changing the way modern dating will work entirely. In this episode of The Seen, we dive into: - The secret LinkedIn strategy that brings you jobs and investors (without even applying) - Why data will become the most valuable resource of the next decade (and how he’s building around it) - The one mindset shift that separates high-performers from everyone else - What advising bankrupt Fortune 500 companies taught him about growth Follow Eric: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericdouglasmchugh/ Dataing - https://dataing.io

  4. Feb 13

    He Built & Sold 3 Startups… While Working Full-Time

    In less than 16 hours, Troy Munson went from idea to 12 companies ready to pay. He’s gone on to build and sell multiple startups, navigating six-figure exits while still working full-time. But now he’s gone all-in on the latest side gig, scaling it from 15 companies to over 1,000 requesting access in under five months. If you think you move fast, this will truly break your frame. In this episode of The Seen, we dive into: - Exactly how YOU can make $15k/month in profit RIGHT NOW - How he grew his LinkedIn to drive 90% of his revenue - The real math behind scaling and selling a SaaS company - How to get companies to pay before you even have a platform - The worst mistake you can make when getting acquired (and how to avoid it) Follow Troy: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/troymunson/ TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@eatwithtroy Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/eatwithtroy/

  5. 12/31/2025

    ... and that's a wrap

    In this closing episode of 2025, Kaia breaks down the biggest lessons from every founder, builder, and operator, who was on the show this year. She dives into: - The common threads every top performer shared - The moments (and mess-ups) behind the scenes that you've never heard - The takeaways you need to hear before 2026 - The secret sauce of The Seen (AKA how the magic happens) Thank you everyone for being here this year. We'll see you in 2026 ;) Kaia's LinkedIn that she kept mentioning - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaia-tham/

  6. 12/19/2025

    She’s managed $5B in ads for Target, Walmart, Hulu… here’s what actually works (and what doesn’t)

    As the founder of the Dumont Project (now acquired by Cart.com, valued at $1.6B), Dawn Perdew has managed over $5B in ad spend for some of the biggest brands in the world. In this episode of The Seen, we dive into: - The one metric every company should be watching daily - How Fortune 500 companies and startups should think very differently about scale - The early warning signs that your company is going to fail - The biggest mistakes founders make when scaling paid media - The most underrated forms of advertising (that you probably haven’t even heard of) Follow Dawn: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawndumontperdew/

  7. 12/05/2025

    The $30M Serial Founder Helping Parkinson’s Patients Walk Again

    Take one look at Rupert Barksfield’s LinkedIn and you’ll wonder how one person has done all that he has.  A serial entrepreneur who has founded companies across Web3, AI, fintech, medtech, crypto, and more, Rupert is someone whose career looks almost impossible on paper, until you hear the story behind it. In this episode of The Seen, we dive into: - The fundraising mistakes that kill startups, and how Rupert avoided them while raising $30M - The exact playbook he uses to build a startup from scratch across any industry - The validation test that every founder should do right away - How to build momentum in the first 6-12 months - The one signal that tells him a founder is going to make it Follow Rupert: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/rupert-barksfield/

  8. 11/21/2025

    The first ever AI guest on the pod!

    This is the only interview where the guest isn’t alive (technically).  After interviewing Kunal Gupta last week about scaling his newsletter to $1M, raising $80M for his first company, and his experiments on life, we decided to push the interview one step further… And interview his AI clone. In this episode of The Seen we ask AI Kunal everything we didn’t get to in the human interview.  We dive into: - Why he never monetised Pivot 5 with paid subscription - How to implement an AI agent in your life (right now) - The exact conversation that landed him Time Inc as a client - How he validated his earliest AI pilots in his business (step-by-step) - What he would do today to grow a newsletter to 10, 1000, and 10 000 subscribers Follow Kunal: Talk to his AI - https://kunal.live  LinkedIn - ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/bykunal/⁠ Personal Website - ⁠https://kunal.live/⁠ Blog - ⁠https://www.howto.live/⁠ Pivot 5 - ⁠https://join.pivot5ai.com/⁠ Books - ⁠https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kunal-Gupta/author/B0CKLTXMM4?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

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About

Forget overnight success. These are the real stories behind visionary entrepreneurs, brand disruptors, and creative minds who make themselves seen. Hosted by Kaia Tham, The Seen dives into raw marketing strategy, risky business moves, and breakthrough tactics that drive real growth. If you want to build disruptive brands, crush your market, and make a lasting impact, this is your playbook, straight from some of the most successful entrepreneurs.

Information

  • Creator
    Kaia Tham
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    16
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Kaia Tham
  • Show Website
    The Seen