Not Another Podcast

Infinity Constellation
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

Hey, I’m Brennan Pothetes. I’ve raised millions, burned out hard, and learned that most startup advice is toxic BS. Hustle culture isn’t a superpower. It’s a fast track to burnout. So I’m starting Not Another Podcast. Each episode, I’m doing something fun, like building Legos or cooking spaghetti, while having raw, honest convos with founders. It’s part therapy, part teardown. All real talk. If you’re done with the hype and want sustainable success, this is for you.

  1. Oct 20

    Why You Can't Just Add AI to Your Business | Ryan Denehy @ Electric

    Ryan Denehy was running Electric, an outsourced IT department for thousands of companies, when he decided to tear it up. The company had grown triple digits five years in a row and raised $200 million. On paper, nothing was wrong. Underneath, margins had stopped growing and every new customer cost more to win. So he rebuilt Electric as an AI-native company instead of bolting AI onto the old service business. Today it runs at 80% gross margins, up from 50% on its best day. He explains why "just add AI" fails for most services companies, why he doesn't believe AI will wipe out jobs, and what 20 years of founding has taught him about keeping his own head straight. In this episode: • Why he pivoted a $50M business while it was still growing • Why the best time to make big changes is when you have plenty of cash • How Electric went from 50% to 80% gross margins • Why he's skeptical of the AI roll-up boom • Why big leaps in technology have never cut total jobs • The Got Milk campaign he thinks AI needs • How a fake ID got his first startup its first customers New episodes of Not Another Podcast every week. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:14 Pivoting a $50M business 02:51 What was wrong under the surface 07:15 Why AI roll-ups are fragile 09:42 Going from 50% to 80% margins 11:34 Will AI take everyone's jobs? 13:32 The coming AI services boom 15:06 Non-technical founders who can build now 21:13 Why you can't just "inject" AI 23:07 Where's the Got Milk ad for AI? 24:22 What the pivot really changed 29:39 A failed first startup and a fake ID 33:55 Why startups die from the inside 37:47 Managing your own head as a founder 42:00 The noon rule 44:32 What he'd build with $0

  2. Oct 13

    Why AI Isn't Safe for Your Kids (Yet) | Mike Rizkalla @ Snorble

    Every investor told Mike Rizkalla to put ChatGPT inside his product for toddlers. He told them that was like handing a bazooka to a three-year-old. They funded his competitors instead, and within a year, Mike says, some of those AI toys were talking to kids about sex and how to make bombs. Mike is the founder and CEO of Snorble, a screen-free smart companion for kids that runs offline, has no camera, and lets parents set the routines and values. He's been building AI products for 15 years, had his first one acquired by Google in 2010, and before any of that spent 11 years as a punk rock guitarist who turned down a record label that wanted worldwide rights to his band. Brennan asks him why generative AI isn't safe for young kids yet, what it cost him to say no to that capital, and what every parent should check before buying an AI toy. They also get into the KPIs Mike says broke social media, the AI tool he says caught 3,500 predators in a single day, how he runs a hardware company with his phone off from bedtime to school drop-off, and why half his team invested in the company, including people he'd already laid off. In this episode: • Why generative AI isn't safe for young kids yet • The investor pressure to "just use ChatGPT," and what saying no cost him • What to look for, and what to avoid, when buying AI toys for your kids • Why cameras in a kid's bedroom are a hard no • The three KPIs he says broke social media • The AI tool that caught predators, and why big platforms passed on it • What his punk band taught him about building product • How half his team ended up investing, including people he'd laid off Subscribe for more unfiltered founder conversations on Not Another Podcast.Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.Follow Brennan and Infinity for what's next. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:10 Welcome Mike Rizkalla 01:29 What the punk rocker would tell the CEO 02:45 The band rule behind how he builds product 05:07 Why there's no such thing as an MVP 07:24 Shipping hardware through Covid 09:58 Is hardware the only moat left? 12:00 Why Snorble said no to generative AI 14:11 A bazooka to a three-year-old 15:11 Why AI is risky for young kids 17:26 What he'd tell the CEO of Mattel 20:47 Why AI went from lab to production too fast 24:23 Our KPIs are wrong 26:43 What parents should look for in AI toys 30:09 Predators and plausible deniability 32:40 Why cameras don't belong in kids' rooms 35:07 Running a company with his phone off at night 37:46 The team members who invested after layoffs 42:58 When a 10 million dollar commitment fell through 49:59 The 22-inch cookie that got his band on TV

  3. Oct 6

    3 Signs You Should Never Raise Venture Capital (Ex-Morgan Stanley Investor) | Justin Kramer

    Justin Kramer has watched friends raise $10, $20, even $30 million and end up sitting on it with no idea what to do next. He raised venture himself, and he still thinks most founders shouldn't. Justin spent his early career at Morgan Stanley managing money for people who were already rich. When GameStop and AMC started wiping out everyday investors, he left to build Moby, a company that uses AI to bring Wall Street-grade research to retail investors. Four-plus years in, Brennan asks him when a founder should never raise, and why the venture path is so hard to get off once you're on it. They also get into where the AI trade stands right now: valuations Justin calls out of control, why he still won't sit in cash, what Anthropic's IPO means for everyday investors, and why he's bearish on crypto even though he owns it. In this episode: • The three signs you should never raise venture capital • Why so many well-funded startups are turning into zombie companies • Why distribution is the only real moat when anyone can build anything • How Robinhood's confetti turned investing into a dopamine hit • Why he's bearish on crypto after holding it for years • The hidden costs of owning a house most people overlook • Thinking he was going out of business over and over, and what kept him going Subscribe for more unfiltered founder conversations on Not Another Podcast. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow Brennan and Infinity for what's next. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:10 Welcome Justin Kramer 01:41 Bringing Wall Street research to retail investors 05:35 Robinhood confetti and gamified investing 07:28 What GameStop taught retail investors 09:21 Why he left Morgan Stanley 12:29 Are tech valuations out of control? 14:05 Anthropic's IPO and a $30 trillion forecast 16:22 A 10% chance AI runs away from us 19:22 Why he's anti-crypto 25:11 Distribution is the only moat left 26:14 3 signs you shouldn't raise venture 27:23 Zombie companies and bloated venture funds 29:36 Are we in an AI bubble? 35:56 Is capitalism broken?

  4. Sep 29

    She Got Into YC at 21 Because of a Tweet | Chloe Samaha @ BOND

    Chloe Samaha told the crew in the green room that your calendar predicts your future better than your ambition does. Brennan opened the episode with it. She's 22, co-founder and CEO of BOND, and she got into Y Combinator at 21 off a reply to a single tweet. Before that she cold emailed hundreds of private equity partners as a freshman, learned that sales was the one thing she could prove on an application with no resume behind it, and built the first version of BOND out of a founders house in San Francisco. Then there's the part that explains the rest of it. At 19, on her second solo skydive, her first parachute didn't open. She spent that night journaling and came out obsessed with where every hour goes. In this episode: • How a reply to one tweet turned into a YC acceptance at 21 • What YC screens for in a founding team, and why most companies die from the co-founder relationship • The founder debt meeting she runs with her co-founders every week • Why she cuts every goal's timeline in half • What 2,000 CEOs told her about their own companies • Why she's bullish on Gen Z, and the 19-year-old hire who proved it • The jump where the parachute failed, and the 40 minutes of drills that saved her New episodes of Not Another Podcast every week. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:34 Your calendar predicts your future, not your ambition 04:34 The reply to one tweet 07:59 Auditing where the hours actually go 09:57 Cutting every timeline in half 14:19 How she got good at sales by 21 19:40 Getting into Y Combinator 22:54 Why she's bullish on Gen Z 23:56 Hiring young, and the 19-year-old who ran distribution 26:52 Getting 2,000 CEOs on the phone 30:43 Breaking down the Product Hunt launch 32:21 Collecting people more exceptional than her 34:09 Why she builds in San Francisco 36:18 What Beirut and Paris gave her as a founder 41:51 Being a millionaire on paper at 22 47:51 Why she's max on AI when her peers aren't 52:16 What 2,000 CEOs don't know about their own companies 59:05 The skydive, and what it made her decide 1:00:12 The billboard

  5. Sep 15

    Ranking Startup Cities, Funding, and Founder Books | The Tier List with Brennan

    Brennan Pothetes builds companies out of New York, and in this episode he says San Francisco is a B tier place to start one. No guest this time. Just the arguments he has with founder friends over drinks, settled out loud with letter grades. Brennan ranks the six things founders fight about most: where to build, how to fund it, what to read, how to lead, how to work, and what to do with your twenties. Profitable businesses take S tier for funding, while venture, the path he has raised on for years, lands at B. Deep work blocks beat 996. Europe gets an F, and he knows his European investors are watching. Radical candor tops the management list, with fear-based hero mode at the bottom next to LinkedIn slop. For founders tired of consensus takes, the grades are the point. In this episode: • Why New York is S tier for applied AI, and what San Francisco's flood of talent actually costs you • The funding source Brennan puts above venture, debt, and private equity • The one way to fund a company he says you should never use • Why deep work blocks outrank the 996 schedule taking over AI • The book he made required reading at his own company, and the one he rates F tier • The leadership style he built his companies on, and the one that quietly wears teams down • What he tells 22-year-olds to do instead of firing off AI-written resumes Subscribe for more unfiltered founder conversations on Not Another Podcast. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Follow Brennan and Infinity for what's next. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 00:41 Welcome to the tier list 00:58 Founder work philosophies 01:45 Why 996 lands at C 02:23 LinkedIn slop, F tier 02:38 The best city to found in 03:45 San Francisco at B 04:05 Anywhere in Europe, F tier 04:25 New York at S 05:03 Fundraising sources 05:54 The one way he says never to fund a company 06:12 Books for founders 07:17 Your professor's textbook, F tier 07:41 Management and leadership styles 09:21 Fear-based hero mode 09:45 Radical candor at S 10:04 What to do in your 20s 10:19 Travel, and the Octopus card in Hong Kong 11:28 The S tier career move 12:21 AI-written resumes, F tier

  6. Sep 1

    Founders Should Write About Everything Except Their Business | Adam Delehanty @ Ghost

    Adam Delehanty has been a Knicks fan since he was zero years old. What struck him about last season's run was that when OG tips the ball in, there is no debate about what just happened. Then he goes back to his own work, and the work of most of the people watching, and it's Google Docs and strategy decks and products nobody may ever see. Brennan sits down with him as the founder and CEO of Ghost, a content agency that writes books and culture documents for some of the biggest names in tech. His argument to founders is uncomfortable: stop writing about your company. Your job is to build something so extraordinary that other people write about it anyway, and then spend your own words on everything else. They get into the parts nobody says out loud. Why the agency model of a charismatic CEO winning the business and handing the work to a 23-year-old feels icky in every sense. Why he shrank his own company on purpose. The executive coach he turned down after one AI-written proposal. And why he thinks the internet makes tech look further to the right than it actually is. In this episode: • The Knicks scoreboard problem: how a knowledge worker knows whether anything they did mattered • His four steps to original output: unusual inputs, an unusual life, leaning into your weird, and authenticity • Going to primary sources, and the friend posting Eisenhower footage his generation has never seen • Borrowed audience versus bought audience, and the third category he calls squad media • Why attaching your company to something bigger than itself is the whole game • The party test: how long you'd last talking to someone who only riffs about their product • Why he shrank his agency instead of scaling it, and what talent plus AI replaces • Human, Claude, human: where he actually uses AI and where he refuses to • Proof of work for creatives, and wanting to see the sweat coming off the saxophone • Why he thinks centrist and center-left voices in tech stay quiet Subscribe for new episodes every week. Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Find Adam Delehanty on LinkedIn and X.

  7. Aug 18

    A 56-Minute Masterclass on Manifestation for Skeptics | Sarah Perl @ Stella

    Sarah Perl had fewer than 150 followers when a tarot video she posted as a college sophomore went viral overnight. Three years later she'd made over a million dollars in courses, paid off the student debt she took on for a teaching degree everyone told her not to get, and left Brooklyn for LA. This year she shipped Stella, an AI app she designed the front end of herself using Claude Code, on no venture funding. Brennan sits down with her not as the internet's manifestation girl, but as what she actually is: a distribution-first, bootstrapped, AI-native operator with 4.5 million followers and a very specific theory of why founders win. Her framing for this audience is blunt. Manifesting is the For You page. Where you put your attention is where your life ends up going, and belief is the highest-leverage, lowest-effort thing you can work on. They get into the parts she almost never gets asked about: why she'd only hire neurodivergent people, what her ADHD has actually cost her, the Twitter thread full of guys planning to build her app that pushed her to ship, and the launch week when her own users turned on her pricing. In this episode: Why she optimizes for obsession instead of strategy, and how that shapes what gets builtThe exact origin of "I get paid to exist," said years before it was remotely trueHow she reframes ADHD and anxiety as an operating system rather than a defectWhat building the front end of a real app with Claude Code on her phone actually looked likeThe Twitter thread that made her stop planning and shipWhy lottery winners lose the money, and what that has to do with your revenue ceilingThe biggest regret of her life, and why she still wouldn't change it Subscribe for new episodes every week.Watch on YouTube, listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.Find Sarah at @hothighpriestess and download Stella on the App Store.

  8. Aug 4

    How a Brain Surgeon Scientist Learned to Spot Fake AI | Afsheen Afshar

    Afsheen Afshar has one of the strangest résumés in tech: an MD and a PhD who built brain-machine interfaces that helped paralyzed patients type using only their thoughts, then walked away from medicine to become Wall Street's first Chief Data Science Officer at J.P. Morgan. So when he says most of the AI being sold today is "theater," he has the standing to mean it. In this conversation with Brennan Pothetes, Afsheen (Founder Managing Partner of Pilot Wave Holdings) draws a hard line between what's real about AI and what's a very expensive branding exercise. He explains why LLMs are just "the most multidimensional autocomplete ever devised," why AI projects fail on culture and never on the math, and why he's quietly buying boring Main Street companies while everyone else chases the next San Francisco demo. It gets spicy: the pair debate whether trading your data for "free" services is capitalism working or a rigged barter, why the foundational-model labs are losing the public, and what a brain scientist thinks machines still can't copy. Highlights: How to tell real AI from "theater" in under a minuteThe prompt trick a doctor uses to get expert-level answers from any modelWhy "data is the new oil" is a warning about who owns your futureWhat Wall Street's first AI chief saw inside the big banksThe VC line about small business that sent a chill down his spineWhy he says AI is "plenty dangerous" without ever being consciousThe one thing the human brain does that no model comes close to Subscribe to Not Another Podcast for unfiltered conversations with the founders and operators actually building the future. Watch on YouTube. Listen on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Hey, I’m Brennan Pothetes. I’ve raised millions, burned out hard, and learned that most startup advice is toxic BS. Hustle culture isn’t a superpower. It’s a fast track to burnout. So I’m starting Not Another Podcast. Each episode, I’m doing something fun, like building Legos or cooking spaghetti, while having raw, honest convos with founders. It’s part therapy, part teardown. All real talk. If you’re done with the hype and want sustainable success, this is for you.

Information

  • Creator
    Infinity Constellation
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    42
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Infinity Constellation
  • Show Website
    Not Another Podcast

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