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Fondo is an all-in-one accounting platform for startups. Get your books closed, taxes filed, and cash back from the IRS.

  1. START: Reuben Torenberg, Senior Vice President, CBRE: "Q1 2026 SF Office Market Report"

    10h ago

    START: Reuben Torenberg, Senior Vice President, CBRE: "Q1 2026 SF Office Market Report"

    In 2022, San Francisco leased five million square feet of office space The entire year In Q1 2026 alone: more than four million At the time of this recording (Apr 2026) tenant demand reached 7.5 million square feet The highest ever recorded. OpenAI has accumulated nearly a million square feet in Mission Bay Coinbase, Nvidia, and the Warriors all landed at Mission Rock (It's effectively full - premium space there is almost impossible to get) Reuben Torenberg has brokered SF startup office deals through every major cycle since 2016 The 3% vacancy boom and record rents The 38% vacancy COVID collapse And the AI-driven resurgence happening now We're probably still early in this cycle The AI wave showed you can do more with less And that's changing how founders think about space 🎙️ Reuben Torenberg, Senior Vice President, CBRE on Fondo START 00:36 Why brokering compounds the longer you do it 01:08 SF's pre-COVID boom, then the jump to 38% vacancy 02:18 How AI restarted SF office demand 02:42 Where we are in the cycle, and why it isn't the top 03:25 The leasing numbers that signal a real shift 04:34 Why startups are leasing differently now 05:34 How distressed buildings changed hands at a discount 06:11 How landlords regained leverage 07:38 What landlords actually check before they'll sign you 09:48 Why plug-and-play subleases win with startups 12:18 Advice for founders hunting their first office 13:01 Treating the office as a recruiting tool, not a status symbol learn more at cbre.com

    17 min
  2. START: Leo Kankkunen, Founder & CEO, DAIVIN!: “Tankless Dive Gear - Breath Autonomy at Sea, Land & Space”

    2d ago

    START: Leo Kankkunen, Founder & CEO, DAIVIN!: “Tankless Dive Gear - Breath Autonomy at Sea, Land & Space”

    A single glass of water holds about 20 hours of breathing Leo Kankkunen is building the gear that pulls it out Tankless diving technology that generates breathable oxygen directly from water.  It sounds impossible at first. Then you hear the physics... Then you realize the implications stretch far past diving Water is hydrogen and oxygen. Apply a DC current, swing away the electrons binding them, and you get the purest form of breathable gas. The idea started with a simple frustration Leo is an electrical engineer and a diver. Every dive exposed the same limits: Bulky tanks, Logistics, Safety risks, Cost, and Operational complexity. Instead of accepting those constraints, he asked a question: Is there any way we could breathe like a fish? That sent him down a rabbit hole into electrolysis If water already contains oxygen, why haul tanks at all?  Why not generate breathable oxygen exactly where and when it's needed? Enter DAIVIN! (YC W26) - Tankless dive gear that generates oxygen directly from the water around you. No tanks to haul, fill, or run out of. But diving is just the wedge Anywhere breathing depends on a tank, the tank sets the limit.  Crisis zones. High altitude rescue. Anywhere time is human lives.  Generate the oxygen on site, and there's no supply chain to depend on. 🎙️ Leo Kankkunen, CEO & Founder, Daivin on Fondo START pod 00:18 What Daivin is building and why oxygen tanks are the real problem00:43 One glass of water holds roughly 20 hours of breathing01:05 The science of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen with a DC current01:38 The wearable system that draws in surrounding water and produces oxygen02:10 Leo's path from electrical engineer and diver to founder02:48 Where the tech stands today: commercial close, consumer further out03:15 Why removing oxygen logistics matters in crisis response and rescue03:38 The Netflix versus Blockbuster framing for oxygen infrastructure04:05 Why water beats gas tanks for breathing beyond Earth05:20 From a Slush side event in Finland to a YC interview within weeks06:25 Building in San Francisco versus Finland and compressing months into weeks07:15 Leo's advice for founders: build what genuinely interests you Check out daivin.tech

    9 min
  3. START pod: Kashyab Ambarani & Rishi Mahadevan, Co-Founders, Verbiflow “The system that runs your outbound”

    4d ago

    START pod: Kashyab Ambarani & Rishi Mahadevan, Co-Founders, Verbiflow “The system that runs your outbound”

    Startups spend more time wiring their outbound tools together than actually talking to potential customers Verbiflow was built to change that It's Outbound Infrastructure for growth teams Outbound used to be a stack One tool for email. Another for LinkedIn. Something else for cold calls. Verbiflow is the system that runs your outbound, all in one place Run sequences through email, LinkedIn, and cold calls Handles sending Manages replies Runs follow-ups Keeps it all in sync Because the real bottleneck isn't finding leads It's getting in front of the right people before momentum disappears And in a world flooded with AI-generated outreach, they're betting on: better conversations, not more messages From prospect to pipeline From outreach to conversation From disconnected tools to one outbound system 🎙️ Kash Ambarani & Rishi Mahadevan, Co-Founders, Verbiflow on Fondo START pod ‍ 00:57 Platforms for email, LinkedIn, and cold calling are completely separate 02:08 We built an MCP that gets you live in 10 minutes 03:25 Why AI "personalization" in email is making outbound worse 04:18 Cold calling is the most underrated channel right now 05:16 AI coaching and real-time objection handling on calls 06:03 A targeted list is way better than trying to fill a giant list 07:35 Try to get there in person and actually talk to them 08:10 How they mapped every Series A-C startup in SF by scraping T&Cs ‍ Check out verbiflow.com

    12 min
  4. START: Henk Pretorius & Harry Zhang, Co-founders, Timelaps | “Brand Intelligence on Auto-Pilot”

    Jun 16

    START: Henk Pretorius & Harry Zhang, Co-founders, Timelaps | “Brand Intelligence on Auto-Pilot”

    Most brands don't know if their marketing is working. They launch campaigns. Spend real money. Watch the dashboards. Then hope. Months later, a report arrives explaining what happened.  The campaign is over. The budget is gone.The market has already moved. That's how brand tracking has worked for years. Henk and Harry are repeat founders with exits behind them - two decades building brand trackers for the world's largest brands on one side, a startup built and sold plus a market research career on the other. They'd watched the same problem from the inside for years. Tracking was expensive. Slow. Built around snapshots.  Not how brands actually grow. So they built Timelaps: An AI-native brand tracker that continuously surveys thousands of real consumers and shows whether your marketing is moving the metrics that matter.  Brand awareness. Consideration. Preference. Category ownership. Brand growth. Research-grade tracking. Updated continuously. Running in days instead of months. At a fifth of the cost of traditional tracking. From "What happened?" to "What's happening right now?" ‍ 🎙️  Henk Pretorius & Harry Zhang, Co-Founders, Timelaps on Fondo START pod ‍ 00:17 Building AI-native brand intelligence for modern brands 00:45 Why brand tracking remains one of marketing's biggest pain points 01:53 How two founders met at ODF and began validating ideas together 02:42 Combining market research expertise with startup experience 03:24 Landing customers from a prototype before building the full product 03:46 Winning Product Hunt with an early demo 04:35 Why the original customer problem never changed 05:30 The limitations of traditional brand tracking and brand audits 06:03 Moving from delayed reports to continuous insights 06:40 The metrics that matter most in brand intelligence 07:35 Making enterprise-grade brand tracking accessible to challenger brands 11:43 Why San Francisco accelerates founder learning and execution 12:47 The "Olympic Games of building companies" mindset ‍ Check out www.timelaps.io

    16 min
  5. START pod: Jameson Zaballos, Co-Founder & CEO, Napa: “Your storytelling problems, solved”

    Jun 12

    START pod: Jameson Zaballos, Co-Founder & CEO, Napa: “Your storytelling problems, solved”

    The internet got flooded with AI content. Everything started sounding the same. Same hooks.Same cadence.Same “we’re not doing X — we’re doing Y.” Jameson Zaballos thinks that’s exactly why human taste matters more now. Napa is the team behind those viral startup memes you’ve probably already seen. But underneath the memes is a bigger thesis:The future of founder marketing belongs to people who still sound human. Not polished.Not optimized. Human. AI can generate infinite content.But it still averages the internet. The founders winning attention right now are the ones adding taste back into the loop.Write like you talk. Post when nobody else posts. Make your ICP feel seen. Usenapa.com 🎙️ Jameson Zaballos, Co-Founder & CEO, Napa on Fondo START 01:07 Why founders can't cut through the noise02:12 "If you outsource the opinion to Claude, you level the playing field"02:45 How AI writing quietly cheapens your brand04:15 Why human unpredictability is still the moat05:58 The overlooked advantage of posting on weekends08:42 Why memes work when they reflect real customer pain09:55 The return of long-form storytelling

    12 min
  6. START pod: Parth Maheshwari & Chetan Manda, Co-Founders, Mochatrade | "US stock perps for Indian traders"

    Jun 12

    START pod: Parth Maheshwari & Chetan Manda, Co-Founders, Mochatrade | "US stock perps for Indian traders"

    Global markets were built for everyone. Access wasn't. Millions of traders outside the US watch Tesla move. Watch Nvidia earnings.Watch SpaceX rumors explode timelines. But when it's time to act? The door closes. Mochatrade is rebuilding that layer.A perpetual futures platform for US equities. Built for global traders first. Trade TSLA, NVDA, AAPL, and 50+ US stocks Up to 50x leverage24/7 marketsNo US brokerage account required Deposit in local currency. Trade in minutes. Stay self-custodial the entire time. Because the future of trading won't look like legacy brokerage apps. It'll be:BorderlessAlways-onCrypto-native infrastructure underneathSimple UX on top India already drives massive derivatives (60%) volume. But global traders still can't easily access leveraged US equities. That contradiction became the company. "We have experienced the pain point ourselves"  Parth and Chetan grew up in India watching this door stay closed. So they built the platform they wished existed. Not another broker. An access layer for the next generation of retail traders. 🎙️ Parth Maheshwari & Chetan Manda, Co-Founders, Mochatrade on Fondo START pod ‍ 00:57 Why global traders still can't access leveraged US stocks 02:21 Turning INR deposits into seamless US stock trading 03:27 Why India dominates 60% of global derivatives activity 04:06 Trading pre-IPO companies like SpaceX through perps 05:10 What perpetual futures actually are and why they're simpler 06:27 Why perps fix the retail options problem 07:45 From AI agents to financial infrastructure 08:52 Leaving AI to rebuild global market access 09:30 How three IIT friends and former roommates found the idea ‍ Check out www.mochatrade.com

    14 min
  7. START pod: Nikolas Keller, CEO & Co-Founder, Walter "AI Employee for Manufacturing Operations"

    Jun 10

    START pod: Nikolas Keller, CEO & Co-Founder, Walter "AI Employee for Manufacturing Operations"

    The best AI companies aren't replacing bad software. They're giving it a login. Every software company for years has made the same pitch to manufacturers: clean APIs, migrate your stack, rip out your ERP. It never works.  The ERP is the company brain. Years of data.  You can't rip it out any more than you can rip out someone's memory. Nikolas Keller & Co-Founder Lukas Postulka figured out the obvious thing that everyone missed Stop trying to replace the software.  Give an AI employee a login instead. Walter (YC P26) signs into SAP, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Oracle the way a new hire would.  Ready to go from day 1. Works out of Teams and email like the rest of the team.  Reads orders. Enters them. Places supplier POs. Catches pricing errors before they ship... Not another dashboard. Not another integration project. Not another rip and replace. A purchase order that used to take 15 minutes now takes a few seconds. The insight came from a $109M manufacturer who had a full-time employee doing nothing but typing purchase orders into an ERP Not because the work was valuable. Because the software demanded it. With Walter, your software stays. The manual work disappears. 🎙️ Nikolas Keller, CEO & Co-Founder of Walter (YC P26) on Fondo START 02:02 Growing up across Beijing, Zurich, Munich, and Singapore02:53 Walking into French restaurants asking for a job04:10 Why he walked away from the Michelin-star path04:48 Choosing startups because uncertainty was the point05:25 Flying to San Francisco with a duffel bag06:18 Getting rejected, then forcing his way into a startup07:06 Learning software engineering and customer discovery08:00 Meeting future co-founder Lukas Pistoor09:00 Lukas' bias toward action and unconventional journey10:16 Discovering the manufacturing workflow problem10:48 Selling Walter before the product existed11:26 Why AI employees work where ERP replacements fail visit www.walter.one to learn more

    17 min
  8. START pod: Gohar Tamrazyan, CEO & Co-Founder, Pavoot - "AI Event Manager for Customer Events"

    Jun 8

    START pod: Gohar Tamrazyan, CEO & Co-Founder, Pavoot - "AI Event Manager for Customer Events"

    Relationships drive revenue. That's why more companies are investing in dinners, customer events, founder meetups, and community gatherings. But here's what happens after the event: You sourced the attendees You sent the invites You hosted the event Then everyone goes home Now you're digging through Slack messages, WhatsApp chats, notes apps, spreadsheets, and email threads trying to remember: Who showed up. Who you talked to. What was discussed. Who deserves a follow-up. Most of that context never makes it back into the business. The event created value. The workflow lost it. Pavoot is an AI event manager built for companies that run customer events It helps teams find the right attendees and draft personalized invitations It shows who's in the room and why they're relevant It lets teammates capture notes around each attendee and share context with each other in real time And afterward, those conversations can flow back into the CRM instead of disappearing into someone's phone. The event was never the hard part. Keeping what it created is. Because relationships don't create value when they're made They create value when they're remembered 🎙️ Gohar Tamrazyan, CEO & Co-Founder Pavoot (YC P26) on Fondo START 00:22 Ana's journey from Brazil to AI research at ETH Zürich 01:06 Gohar's chess background and Swiss national team experience 01:40 Building a media management tool and discovering a larger problem 02:45 Why companies are investing more heavily in in-person events 03:14 The real goal behind customer events: relationships and outcomes 04:05 Using AI to source attendees and build the right room 04:21 Event recommendations based on attendee interests 04:38 The challenge of remembering conversations after events 05:00 Why teams still rely on Slack, WhatsApp, notes, and voice recordings 05:30 Capturing attendee context and team notes in one place 06:17 Launching Pavoot's Luma integration 08:22 Which companies benefit most from AI-powered event management learn more at pavoot.com

    11 min
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Fondo is an all-in-one accounting platform for startups. Get your books closed, taxes filed, and cash back from the IRS.

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  • Creator
    Fondo
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    79
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Fondo
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