No Permission

Daniel Druger
  • 5.0 (1)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Updated Weekly

No Permission is where young founders tell their stories, about the businesses they've created that nobody believed in at first - except them. Host Daniel Druger sits down with entrepreneurs who had more conviction than credentials, more vision than validation, and a very healthy dose of delusion to go all in and build something real. This isn't 'How I Built This', this is 'How I'm Building This', made for the next generation of founders. Every episode is proof that you don't need experience, connections, or permission to start.

Episodes

  1. Aug 5

    How 22 Year Old College Students Raised $1.1M and Invented a Snack Category ft. George Zhou

    "The more confidence you have, the more the delusion becomes reality." "In today's world, selling to consumers is all about eyeballs, all about attention. If you can capture their attention, you can sell to them. If you can't, you can't anymore." George Zhou, co-founder and CEO of BUFFS, is building a brand new snack category as a 22 year old. He and his co-founder invented a crunchy, airy beef chip that's described as "a beef Cheeto." This is his story of starting from nothing, never asking for permission to build, to raising $1.1M and thousands of pre-orders. How many founders do you know who used ChatGPT as their food scientist? George and his childhood best friend Beckett were eating chips at Austin City Limits when they realized every snack on the shelf was either carbs and seed oils or boring beef jerky. They went home, asked ChatGPT how to make a beef chip, and spent the next year in kitchens scooping puffs by hand until they figured it out. They gave up internships and career opportunities to chase a dream. Now they've raised over $1M from operators like the founders of Kettle and Fire, Once Upon a Farm, and Hü Chocolate, grown to 28K Instagram followers with zero ad spend, stacked thousands of pre-orders for a product people have never tasted, and are about to be featured on a TV show. George gets real about what "early" actually looks like. His advice: figure out your customer, test whether they'll pay before you build, and have enough delusional confidence to ignore the reasons it shouldn't work. 🤝 Partner with No Permission: daniel@nopermissionpodcast.com 🎤 Your host:Daniel Druger – 3x exited founder / operator, product exec at Comcast, ex-Snapchat, startup investor. 15+ years working as a founder and with founders 📫 STAY CONNECTEDInstagram: /danieldrugerTikTok: /danieldrugerLinkedIn: /danieldrugerNewsletter: theadsn.com 👉 Hit Subscribe & tap the 🔔, then leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. This quick act of kindness helps more people discover No Permission and the next generation of great builders.

    How 22 Year Old College Students Raised $1.1M and Invented a Snack Category ft. George Zhou

  2. Jul 30

    Tackling the 67% GenZ Loneliness Epidemic: Building A New Social App Without a Backup Plan ft. Carter Munk

    "People crave intimacy in the sense of companionship and friendship rather than romance." Carter Munk, founder and CEO of Pinned Social is on a mission to solve loneliness. This is his story as a 3x founder, never asking for permission to build. How many 3x, sub-30 year old founders do you know? Introducing Carter Munk who founded Moe's Coffee in the US – an Australian coffee brand now in 50+ locations across Canada — while still in school. Later co-founding Circa, a dating app that raised nearly $2 million, before leaving to build Pinned, a new kind of social app designed to solve the loneliness problem his generation faces despite even though they are the most digitally connected in history. The thesis behind Pinned: people don't see their friends because they don't know how to coordinate, not because they don't want to. He walks through how he validated the idea by interviewing 250 people, self-funded the early days, launched to a 12,000-person waitlist, and hit 5,000. He also gets real about outsourcing mistakes at Circa, why he has no backup plan, and the advice he'd give anyone thinking about starting something. 🤝 Partner with No Permission: daniel@nopermissionpodcast.com 🎤 Your host:  Daniel Druger – 3x exited founder / operator, product exec at Comcast, ex-Snapchat, startup investor. 15+ years working as a founder and with founders  📫 STAY CONNECTED Instagram: /danieldruger TikTok: /danieldruger LinkedIn: /danieldruger Newsletter: theadsn.com  👉 Hit Subscribe & tap the 🔔, then leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. This quick act of kindness helps more people discover No Permission and the next generation of great builders.

    Tackling the 67% GenZ Loneliness Epidemic: Building A New Social App Without a Backup Plan ft. Carter Munk

  3. Jul 22

    Teaser: No Permission Season One

    Welcome to No Permission, the show where the next generation of builders are telling their stories. This isn't a show of success stories and highlight reels. And it's not another founder telling you how they built their business with a nine-figure exit behind them. This is something different. Intimate, authentic conversations with the next generation of builders caught at a specific, fleeting moment: After taking the leap. Now that the proof exists. Before the world has caught up. Every guest that comes on No Permission was too young to have a track record and too unproven to have credibility. No one handed them a seat at the table. By any conventional measure, they shouldn't have been able to build what they built. They didn't ask. They built anyway. The company is real. The traction is there. And the story isn't finished yet.

Trailer

About

No Permission is where young founders tell their stories, about the businesses they've created that nobody believed in at first - except them. Host Daniel Druger sits down with entrepreneurs who had more conviction than credentials, more vision than validation, and a very healthy dose of delusion to go all in and build something real. This isn't 'How I Built This', this is 'How I'm Building This', made for the next generation of founders. Every episode is proof that you don't need experience, connections, or permission to start.

Information

  • Creator
    Daniel Druger
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    3
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Daniel Druger
  • Show Website
    No Permission