We Built It Because We Had To
This podcast is designed to go deeper than a standard startup interview. The goal is not to collect polished success stories or surface-level growth tips. The goal is to document how founders actually build: where the idea came from, what forced a leap from curiosity to commitment, how they determined what counted as a true MVP, how the first money and first customers happened, and what it took to stay in the fight through the inevitable highs and lows.
S1 E13 | AGE: The 4th Axis the AGI Conversation Is Missing | Rana Gujral
Rana Gujral, founder of Behavioral Signals, discusses why AGI conversations are missing a fourth axis—Artificial General Experience—and how his company uses paralinguistic models to detect deepfake audio with 98-99% accuracy while refusing third-party LLMs. The episode also covers his journey from leading Smart Home at Logitech to helping rebuild Cricut through a successful IPO, and his vision for hybrid cognition as the future of AI.
All Episodes
S1 E12 | 50 Customers, 1 US Patent, AI That Plays Nice | Stephen Franklin
Stephen Franklin discusses how Netwatch.AI takes a contrarian approach to cybersecurity by integrating with existing tools like AWS and Azure rather than requiring customers to replace their current infrastructure. The episode covers Franklin's journey from engineer to founder, the bootstrapped path to building the company, and how AI reduces response times from hours to seconds while targeting underserved verticals like utilities co-ops.
S1 E11 | Laid Off by the DoE — Then He Built an AI Startup | David Blumenthal
🎙 Season 1, Episode 11 When the U.S. Department of Education was dismantled, David Blumenthal lost his 13-year career as an education researche…
S1 E10 | Fighting Financial Aid Fraud With Agentic AI | Preeti Tanwar
🎙 Season 1, Episode 10 Identity-theft rackets are siphoning federal financial aid away from real students — and Preeti Tanwar built an agenti…
S1 E9 | Don't Hire That Full-Time CMO Yet — Here's Why | Eyal Dror
🎙 Season 1, Episode 9 Most early-stage B2B founders hire a CMO too soon — and Eyal Dror has the 18-month playbook to prove it. Eyal is the fo…
S1 E8 | Nick Mehta on Why AI Customer Success Is Failing | Inbound vs Outbound
🎙 Season 1, Episode 8 AI is crushing customer support. And quietly failing at customer success. Nick Mehta — the founder of Gainsight and the…
"Be Afraid Every Day": 30 Years of Disruption in Capital Markets (Ashok Mittal)
In this episode, I'm joined by Ashok Mittal, founder and CEO of FinTech Global Center — a company he's been building for 30 years across consulti…
PodcastFrom Phone Hacking in the 80s to OT Cybersecurity (Patrick Miller)
In this episode, I'm joined by Patrick Miller, Founder and CEO of Ampyx Cyber. We talk about what OT cybersecurity actually covers (the SCADA contr…
The 3am LinkedIn Slip That Started Metadata.io
In this episode, I'm joined by Gil Allouche, Founder and CEO of Metadata.io. We talk about how Gil turned a $50,000 side project at Spotfire into a…
The 4-Time Exited Founder Going for the Fifth (Peter Pezaris of Vortex Software) Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined by Peter Pezaris, a four-time exiting founder now building his fifth, Vortex Software, out of San Francisco. Peter walk…
300% Year-Over-Year: The AI Content Machine for Law Firms (John Fly of FirmPilot) Podcast
In this episode, I'm joined by John Fly, CTO of FirmPilot — a VC-backed AI platform automating marketing for law firms. John shares how 30 years …
How to Authenticate AI Agents Before They Go Rogue (Rohan Pinto of 1Kosmos)
In this episode, I'm joined by Rohan Pinto, co-founder of 1Kosmos. We trace the evolution of identity management from LDAP and single sign-on to bl…
Podcast: From Coca-Cola & Unilever to AI Startup at 60 — (Stan Sthanunathan of i-Genie.ai)
We talk to the founder of tech startup, i-Genie.ai about his founding story. Stan Sthanunathan is a rare guest for this show — someone who spent d…
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