Podcast Series

We Built It Because We Had To

Real conversations with B2B tech founders who built their go-to-market the hard way. Hosted by Jonathan W. Buckley.

View Podcast Site

Subscribe on your favorite platform

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

Amazon Music

YouTube

Overcast

Castro

Goodpods

Podcast Addict

RSS Feed

Podcast Website

Latest Episode

S1 E21 | From Landing Page to $12M Series A With PayPal Ventures | Geus Walder

Geus Walder shares how Klearly validated demand for a hospitality payment solution with a gamified landing page and 600+ waitlisted businesses before building any product, then pivoted to focus exclusively on the hospitality sector and secured a $12M Series A from PayPal Ventures. The episode covers lean startup tactics, the importance of hiring sales talent from within the hospitality industry, and the founders' decision to commit fully to the business.

Listen

Watch video →

All Episodes

S1 E20 | The Customer Success Branding Gap Most SaaS Companies Miss | Arne Hurty

Arne Hurty of BayCreative discusses building a deliberately small strategy firm serving Silicon Valley tech companies for three decades.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E19 | 2M Autonomous Fixes Inside PayPal | Suresh Mathew, Sedai

Suresh Mathew built an autonomous remediation system at PayPal that Sedai now uses to handle production operations without humans.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E18 | Why AI Data Centers Could Break the U.S. Power Grid | Michael Parrella

Michael Parrella discusses how AI data centers strain electricity grids and how ennrgy pivoted its product to help energy operators manage demand.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E17 | Inside the 64 Billion Identity Breach Data Lake | Andres Andreu

Constella Intelligence CEO Andres Andreu discusses his 64 billion identity breach data lake and pivot to OEM sales model.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E16 | Paying Customers Before Series A | Karen Nguyen, OFFENSAI CEO

Karen Nguyen bootstraps OFFENSAI, an autonomous cybersecurity platform validating real attack chains without inflated Series A funding.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E15 | The 272-Day B2B Sales Cycle | Nick Turner, CEO of Dreamdata

Nick Turner, CEO of Dreamdata, discusses how B2B sales cycles have stretched to 272 days and shares strategies for closing a $55M Series B.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E22 | He Fired His Freelancers and Built a 500-Person Dev Shop to Replace Them | Furqan Aziz

Furqan Aziz founded InvoZone to connect Pakistani engineers with cash-strapped Silicon Valley startups through offshore development.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E14 | $1.2M in 90 Days: The Claims Providers Wrote Off | Michael Riley

Michael Riley's Gabio.ai uses AI agents to recover hospital write-offs instead of chasing claim denials like competitors.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E13 | AGE: The 4th Axis the AGI Conversation Is Missing | Rana Gujral

Rana Gujral discusses Artificial General Experience as missing from AGI conversation and Behavioral Signals' deepfake audio detection technology.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E12 | 50 Customers, 1 US Patent, AI That Plays Nice | Stephen Franklin

Stephen Franklin discusses how Netwatch.AI integrates existing cybersecurity tools instead of replacing them.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E11 | Laid Off by the DoE — Then He Built an AI Startup | David Blumenthal

David Blumenthal built Eddy, an AI tool using peer-reviewed research to help teachers cut through jargon and distrust of both academia and AI.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E10 | Fighting Financial Aid Fraud With Agentic AI | Preeti Tanwar

Preeti Tanwar built AI tools to fight financial aid fraud and help college students while bootstrapping her education tech firm.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E9 | Don't Hire That Full-Time CMO Yet — Here's Why | Eyal Dror

Eyal Dror shares his 18-month fractional CMO playbook for B2B startups, emphasizing messaging over ad optimization.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E8 | Nick Mehta on Why AI Customer Success Is Failing | Inbound vs Outbound

Nick Mehta discusses creating the customer success category, scaling Gainsight to $235M, and why AI excels at inbound support but struggles with outbound CS.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E7 | The Fintech CEO Taking on Bloomberg TOMS | Ashok Mittal

Ashok Mittal, CEO of FinTech Global Center, discusses building trading systems over 30 years and competing with Bloomberg in fixed-income markets.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E6 | Your Water Plant Is Running 30-Year-Old SCADA | Patrick Miller

Patrick Miller discusses OT cybersecurity threats and building Ampyx Cyber as a lean bootstrapped firm.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E5 | The 3am LinkedIn Slip That Started Metadata.io | Gil Allouche

Gil Allouche discusses building Metadata.io from a side project into a successful revenue marketing platform using classical ML and AI agents.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E4 | The 4-Time Exited Founder Going for the Fifth | Peter Pezaris

Peter Pezaris discusses his startup experience and Vortex Software, a plugin optimizing team-invite conversion for freemium products.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E3 | Replacing the $30K Legal Marketing Agency With AI | John Fly

John Fly discusses how FirmPilot uses AI to automate law firm marketing at a fraction of traditional agency costs.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E2 | Why Every AI Agent Needs a Kill Switch | Rohan Pinto

Rohan Pinto discusses 1Kosmos' evolution from identity management to biometric authentication and AI agent security.

Listen

Watch video →

S1 E1 | From Coca-Cola & Unilever to AI Startup at 60 | Stan Sthanunathan

Stan Sthanunathan left his 30-year career at Unilever and Coca-Cola to launch his AI startup i-Genie.ai.

Listen

Watch video →

Investing real money on scale this year?

Get a clear, board-ready read on your go-to-market in two weeks — before you hire the VP, sign the agency, or double the team.

Book a GTM Health Check