Founder Chats

About Claus Enevoldsen: Claus Enevoldsen is the founder of Elsie AI, an AI-powered business partner built for solo e-commerce founders, operating out of 1848 Ventures, a B2B SaaS venture studio focused on SMBs. Before building Elsie, Claus spent years at Flipboard, where the platform scaled to 145 million active users and became the fourth-largest referral traffic source for publishers ahead of Google News. A self-described builder with a growth mindset, Claus brings both large-scale product experience and a scrappy zero-to-one mentality to everything he builds. About Elsie AI: Elsie AI is an AI-powered business partner designed specifically for solo e-commerce founders, the segment Claus believes has been the last to benefit from the AI revolution. Built inside 1848 Ventures, Elsie was co-designed from day one with real e-commerce solopreneurs to address the unique challenge of wearing ten hats at once: prioritizing what to do next, creating marketing content, and monitoring website health. The goal is simple but ambitious: to become the first thing founders open every morning.Show Notes: 00:00 Introduction: what founders will take away from this episode 00:46 What the first 24 hours after launch actually looks like 01:56 How to find your ICP before you have a single customer 04:59 Why going narrow is a wedge, not a limitation 09:48 Lessons from scaling Flipboard to 145M users 11:52 How AI changes the zero-to-one game for founders 13:13 "Sell to build" vs. "intentional speed to market" 14:55 Building micro apps for marketing and lead gen 17:50 Unconventional go-to-market decisions at Elsie AI 19:20 What metrics matter on launch day (and the next two weeks) 21:07 Signups vs. PQLs: why activation rate is the real signal 22:03 The AI churn trap: front-loading value and losing retention 22:25 How Elsie builds habits instead of features 25:23 Churn prediction and behavior-based retention 25:48 Using pricing experiments to test willingness to pay 26:29 Balancing startup life with a creative practice 30:28 AI art, generative work, and the future of creative tools 33:42 Claus asks Luke: What stage is Baremetrics in? 35:00 Hypothesis-driven experimentation and what startups get wrong 39:11 Wrap-up and what's next for Elsie AI

About Walid Amarir:Walid Amarir is the Co-founder and CEO of WaLead.ai, a LinkedIn automation tool built to solve the scalability problems he experienced firsthand running a LinkedIn marketing agency. At just 23, Walid has an unconventional background—he was a professional eSports player earning his parents' salaries by age 18, then studied Physics and Mathematics in the UK before realizing he preferred building businesses to academia. After identifying critical gaps in existing LinkedIn automation tools while scaling his agency, Walid made the jump from service provider to SaaS founder, building a lean, efficient platform that maintains authenticity while automating outreach at scale.About WaLead.ai:WaLead.ai is a LinkedIn automation and prospecting platform designed for B2B companies that need to scale their outbound sales without sacrificing personalization. Built by someone who lived the pain points of existing tools, WaLead solves the core problem that legacy platforms face: they're built for individual users, not for teams managing multiple accounts and campaigns. The platform integrates seamlessly with existing sales workflows, helping companies automate LinkedIn outreach while maintaining the human touch that drives real conversations and conversions.Show Notes:00:00 Introduction to Walid and His Journey02:48 Transition from Agency to Building WaLead.ai05:48 Strategies for LinkedIn Success09:04 Building a Scalable LinkedIn Tool11:59 Managing Integrations14:41 Geographical Advantages and Market Strategy18:01 Metrics and Follow-Up Strategies20:53 Building an Effective LinkedIn Profile23:44 Engagement and Community Building on LinkedIn26:37 Final Thoughts and Future Directions

About Sachin Jain:Sachin Jain is the Co-founder and CEO of Requestly, the browser-based API mocking and testing platform used by over 300,000 developers worldwide. After transforming a weekend Chrome extension project into a Y Combinator-backed company (one of 414 accepted from 17,000 applications), Sachin led Requestly through a successful acquisition by BrowserStack earlier this year. His journey from Google intern and Adobe engineer to successful founder showcases the power of solving your own problems first.About Requestly:Requestly is a developer-first platform that simplifies API mocking, testing, and network request interception directly in the browser. Born from a frustrated developer's need to debug minified JavaScript in production, Requestly eliminates the need for bulky proxy tools by offering a simple Chrome extension that lets developers modify headers, redirect scripts, and mock API responses. The platform has become essential for frontend teams building against incomplete backends.Show Notes:00:00 From Developer to Founder00:32 The P0 Bug That Sparked a Business Idea02:52 Building an MVP in 30 Minutes03:04 Identifying a Problem: The Birth of Requestly05:05 From JavaScript Redirector to API Platform Evolution05:52 The Evolution of Requestly08:21 Organic Growth Without Landing Pages or Marketing08:55 Open Source vs. Monetization10:20 The Open Core Model12:10 Navigating Y Combinator: Tips for Success13:11 What Made Sachin's YC Application Stand Out14:50 Building a Developer Community16:39 Company Culture as Product Differentiation17:57 Acquisition Insights: Choosing the Right Buyer19:45 Customer Support as Competitive Advantage21:01 Post-Acquisition Journey23:53 Lessons Learned: Growth and Adaptation as a Founder24:38 Why Optimize for Right Buyer, Not Price27:57 Personal Growth: From Engineer to CEO

About David Zitoun:David Zitoun is the Co-founder and CEO of Submagic, the AI-powered video editing platform that helps content creators generate viral shorts in seconds. Starting from his own frustration editing YouTube content, David bootstrapped Submagic to over $8M in revenue with an ultra-lean team of just 10 people—no sales team, fully self-serve, and 100% remote. Known for his obsessive focus on pricing experimentation, distribution-first strategy, and profitability over growth-at-all-costs, David represents a new breed of bootstrapped SaaS founder winning in the AI era.About Submagic:Submagic is an AI-powered video editing platform built for content creators who need to produce viral short-form content quickly. Born from a founder's personal pain point, Submagic's radical approach combines cutting-edge AI with an entirely self-serve business model. The company has achieved remarkable capital efficiency, reaching $8M in revenue with just 10 team members while maintaining profitability and sustainable growth.Show Notes:00:00 Inside Submagic's pricing page04:04 From frustrated creator to founder09:59 Building a lean, distributed team15:01 Managing hyper-growth with minimal headcount17:34 Building team culture through retreats19:59 The hidden challenges of managing remote teams21:09 Effective communication in remote work: Loom, World Time Buddy, and Sup Bot24:01 Metrics and success measurement32:14 Hiring the right people for growth33:27 Choosing profitability and sustainability over venture-backed hyper-growth

About Thomas Griffin:Thomas Griffin is the Co-founder of OptinMonster and Gro-Rite Garden. His software powers over 25 million websites globally, and he pioneered the lead capture space by coining and trademarking the term "exit intent." Thomas built OptinMonster during the early days of modern marketing automation, positioning the company at exactly the right place and time as MailChimp, HubSpot, and Constant Contact created market demand for conversion optimization tools.About OptinMonster:OptinMonster is a conversion optimization platform that helps businesses capture leads before visitors leave their website. Created to solve the problem that 70% of website visitors never return, OptinMonster introduced exit intent technology and became the category leader by defining the terminology itself. The platform now powers lead capture for millions of websites and has built a thriving affiliate community of bloggers and marketers who rely on its tools for conversion optimization.Show Notes:00:00 Early entrepreneurial spirit and the path to software02:59 Transitioning to software and SaaS: learning the fundamentals05:59 The birth of OptinMonster: solving the "70% never return" problem09:01 Overcoming early challenges: the SaaS crash and WordPress pivot11:55 Understanding user behavior and psychology: why exit intent works14:59 Marketing strategies and growth: timing the MailChimp/HubSpot wave18:09 The evolution of the product: from WordPress to cross-platform dominance21:01 Building a community and affiliate network: creating viral growth loops24:33 The journey to customer acquisition: when bloggers couldn't stop recommending25:38 Key metrics for business growth: the four-lever framework30:19 The importance of onboarding: the 10-minute rule that changed everything35:56 Transitioning from SaaS to hardware: applying software principles to Gro-Rite Garden42:06 The power of community and support: combating entrepreneurial isolation

About Chase Taake:Chase Taake is the Co-founder of KAT Custom Rings, a bootstrapped e-commerce business disrupting the traditional jewelry industry with custom engagement rings at thousands less than retail prices. With an entrepreneurial journey spanning mini-golf course ownership at 16, a failed axe-throwing business, and multiple startup SDR roles, Chase brings a unique experimental mindset to building businesses. His personal philosophy of "making the world more fun" has guided him through multiple pivots to ultimately build a thriving global jewelry brand from his hometown roots.About KAT Custom Rings:KAT Custom Rings is a bootstrapped e-commerce jewelry company that enables couples to design custom engagement rings at a fraction of traditional retail costs. Starting as a local hometown business, the company has expanded worldwide through strategic online marketing and a commitment to accessible luxury. By combining TikTok marketing savvy with old-school customer service, KAT has carved out a unique position in the competitive jewelry market.Show Notes:00:50 From SDR to Entrepreneur: The strategic job hopping strategy01:37 Early Experiences with Entrepreneurship: Running businesses since 1604:56 Lessons from the Mini Golf Course: What teenage business ownership teaches you10:09 The Praxis Academy Experience: Alternative to college for SaaS careers14:58 Axe Throwing and Event Planning Pivots: Learning from the "Willy Wonka experience"19:54 Building KAT Custom Rings: Finding product-market fit in an unexpected industry25:08 Scaling and Refining the Business: Breaking then fixing as you grow29:56 Looking Ahead: Future Growth Strategies and sustainable scaling

About Stevee Danielle:Stevee Danielle is the CEO of FiveCRM and BeePurple, leading transformation in addiction recovery technology after a remarkable journey from cosmetology through enterprise SaaS sales. Having experienced every level from individual contributor to C-suite across multiple industries, Stevee brings unique empathy and adaptability to her leadership role, where she's leading a mission-driven SaaS that helps recovery centers prove their impact through data.About BeePurple:BeePurple is a specialized CRM platform designed for addiction recovery centers, transforming how peer support specialists stay connected with people in recovery. Built on the principle that "connection beats addiction," the platform helps recovery centers track outcomes, manage relationships, and aggregate data to prove their community impact. Unlike traditional B2B SaaS, BeePurple serves clients who often still use pen and paper in their roles day-to-day, creating a unique approach to selling and supporting mission-driven technology.Show Notes:00:00 Introduction and Background: From cosmetology to SaaS leadership01:18 Transitioning to SaaS Sales: "The only thing I knew about software was I couldn't hold it"02:27 Building Relationships in Sales: How years as a cosmetologist prepared her for enterprise03:30 Selling a Technical Product: The discovery that led to pairing AEs with SEs06:45 Leadership and Team Dynamics: Learning to be receptive from early mentors12:06 From Individual Contributor to CEO: Taking empathy from every level of the journey15:02 Empathy in Leadership: "I wouldn't ask my team to do anything I haven't done"18:05 The Unique Value of BeePurple: Shifting from traditional B2B to mission-driven sales20:55 Connecting with Recovery Centers: Selling to heroes who aren't on LinkedIn

About Justin Hammond:Justin Hammond is a B2B SaaS growth strategist specializing in actionable, checklist-driven playbooks that help founders transform trial users into loyal customers. With over a decade of experience scaling high-growth companies including Book Like a Boss, Justin has become a trusted voice on data-driven onboarding, sustainable growth strategies, and practical frameworks that deliver immediate wins. His approach focuses on granular, implementable tactics rather than high-level theory.Show Notes:01:48 Users signing up to see onboarding flows05:23 Step one to a great onboarding flow: user research07:07 Step two to a great onboarding flow: identify high-converting actions09:02 What should good onboarding emails accomplish in a flow?11:40 Onboarding advice for early-stage startups14:21 Overcoming gaps in Time to First Value during onboarding21:14 How will AI shift SaaS onboarding?24:42 Why you shouldn't try to increase product adoption during onboarding

About Jonni Lundy:Jonni Lundy is the Co-founder and COO of Resend, the developer-first email infrastructure platform that's revolutionizing how companies handle transactional emails. After helping scale Resend from inception to an $18M Series A round led by Andreessen Horowitz, Jonni has become a thoughtful voice on sustainable growth, remote team management, and the psychological transitions founders face as they scale. Under his operational leadership, Resend has built a disciplined, metrics-driven culture that prioritizes long-term sustainability over hypergrowth.About Resend:Resend is a modern email API built for developers who care about deliverability, developer experience, and scalability. Founded to solve the frustrations developers face with legacy email providers, Resend offers a simple, powerful API with React email components, real-time analytics, and enterprise-grade reliability. The company has quickly become the go-to choice for engineering teams at fast-growing startups and enterprises alike.Show Notes:00:00 Introduction to Resend's mission to revolutionize developer email infrastructure02:41 How Resend is disrupting the legacy email provider space with developer-first thinking05:44 The unexpected psychological shift from IC to founder: "Success means other people winning"10:50 Inside their Series A: Why they stayed conservative even after raising $18M from a16z14:55 The retention graph hack that changed everything: inverting data to reveal product truth21:24 Building celebration culture in a remote team: why small wins matter27:40 Remote productivity insights: managing 24/7 flexibility without burning out30:29 Creating genuine connection in distributed teams: beyond Zoom happy hours33:45 Why making space for quieter team voices drives better decisions35:06 "Thoughtful discipline": Resend's approach to sustainable growth41:14 Finding balance as a new parent and founder: the parallel journeys43:48 The one metric that matters post-Series A: ARR per head over everything

About Bijan Moallemi:A graduate of UCSD, Bijan Moallemi has nearly a decade of experience building and leading finance functions at companies like Qualcomm and Palantir. He knew CFOs deserved access to better tools, so he co-founded Mosaic Finance to build the next generation of finance software for CFOs and their teams. Today, Mosaic has achieved a 3.5x increase in customer base, raised $18.5 million in funding with investors like General Catalyst and Founders Fund, and is deployed by the fastest-growing technology companies worldwide.About Mosaic Finance:Mosaic is a compass for business leaders, providing a real-time Analytics and Planning platform that helps teams get from data to decision — faster. Historically finance teams have spent the majority of their efforts in reactive mode, wrangling data to unlock basic facts about the past. A Strategic Finance Platform like Mosaic breaks that cycle by integrating data, automating analytics, and connecting teams so they can focus on the future.Show Notes:01:00 start of Bijan Moallemi’s entrepreneurial journey05:00 making the move to fast-growing tech sphere in the Bay area: facing new business challenges14:00 the importance of building good financial foundations and structures25:00 the iterative process of choosing a model for financial forecasting: testing and adjusting forecasting over the first couple of years38:00 troubleshooting and dealing with the fallout of inaccurate financial models47:00 attracting first customers early on and building the product around them to make sure that what you’re building matches their needs

About Will Peng:Will Peng is the CEO and Co-Founder of Northstar, a financial wellness and benefits platform. Prior to founding Northstar, Will worked in Venture Capital and his firm was an early investor in Coinbase, Guideline, Even, and Oscar. Inspired by the positive change fintech can have on people’s lives, Will set out to solve the inequality of financial guidance.About Northstar:Northstar’s financial wellness program helps employees make the most of their total compensation, and helps companies support their teams at scale through onboarding, open enrollment, equity events, and more. Northstar has raised more than $10M from investors including M13, Foundation Capital, Workday Ventures, and Parade Ventures. Our employer customers include Zoom, Snap, NerdWallet, Superhuman, Virgin Orbit, and more.Show Notes:1:30 Will Peng’s entrepreneurial journey9:00 starting a career as a VC analyst14:30 demonstrating proactivity when looking to switch careers26:00 finding the right career direction through intuition and self-driven learning30:00 most financial advice online is too broad to be effective - personal financial advice should begin with thinking through an individual problem as a case by case34:00 the importance of having difficult conversations44:00 developing an interest in FinTech infrastructure as an Asian-American immigrant45:00 combating the culture of shame around personal finances49:00 understanding how to handle stock options and making other large financial decisions

About Jon Penland:With 6+ years of experience working remotely in the technology space, and 10+ years working with customer-facing teams across multiple industries, Jon stepped into the role of Chief Operating Officer at Kinsta, where his responsibilities include hiring and onboarding as Kinsta has grown from a team of 4 to a team of more than 250 worldwide. While he didn't write his first line of HTML until he was 25 years old, within 3 years Jon was working full-time in technology, first as a freelance writer for technical websites and eventually as a Support Engineer at Kinsta. From there, he moved into management roles, initially as Chief Customer Officer and now as the COO. When he's not driving company-wide strategy and finding ways to help our distributed team stay connected, Jon can be found in rural Georgia with his wife and five kids. You can find him at @jonrichpen on Twitter.About Kinsta:Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider that makes running your site simple. Our services are powered by cutting-edge technology like Google Cloud Platform and Cloudflare, and we take support seriously.  Whether you run a website, online shop, agency, or enterprise, Kinsta’s premium hosting offers top performance. At our core, we're a group of WordPress experts on a mission to make the best hosting platform the world has ever seen. Join the growing club of 23,000+companies who made the switch to better, faster hosting at kinsta.com.

About Douwe Mann:Born and raised in the Netherlands, Douwe Maan was introduced to computers early by his father, and picked up programming at the age of nine. While studying at Utrecht University, Douwe co-founded a SaaS startup that grew to $150k in ARR, which led to him joining GitLab in 2015 as employee number 10 after landing the parents of its CEO as customers. After graduating summa cum laude with a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Douwe spent six months traveling the world, visiting and working with 49 colleagues in 14 countries on 5 continents. In early 2020, Douwe took over as the General Manager of GitLab's internal Meltano project, which quickly gained traction and spun out of GitLab in early 2021 to become an independent startup under Douwe's leadership. Douwe currently lives in Mexico City with his wife, who he met while traveling the world, and their two cats.About Meltano:Meltano is an open source data operations platform that supports data integration connectors for over 300 sources and destinations. Originally an internal project within GitLab, Meltano spun out in early 2020 to become an independent startup with $4.2 million in seed funding from investors, led by Alphabet's GV. Today, Meltano has thousands of active monthly projects and is looking to bring the benefits of open source data integration and DataOps to a wider audience.

About Bryan Clayton:Bryan is CEO and co-founder of GreenPal, an online marketplace that connects homeowners with local lawn care professionals. GreenPal has been called the “Uber for lawn care” by Entrepreneur magazine and has over 200,000 active users completing thousands of transactions per day. Before starting GreenPal, Bryan Clayton founded Peachtree Inc. which had a $10 million annual revenue before it was acquired by Lusa holdings in 2013. In 2020 GreenPal generated $20 million in annual revenue.About GreenPal:GreenPal is an online marketplace connecting homeowners with lawn mowing professionals that want their business. Get 5 bids in minutes, pick the pro you want, and schedule and pay all online or with the mobile app. Founded by landscaping professionals to make the lawn care industry easier and more efficient for homeowners and vendors. Show Notes:01:15 Growing a high school job into a highly successful medium-size business5:45 Hiring the right number of employees6:30 Developing methods to minimize wasting time and other resources10:30 Calculating how much profit every employee adds, and what the diminishing margin of return for manpower is11:10 Working in the business vs. working on the business – making time for strategizing13:20 Applying blue-collar business learnings to tech entrepreneurship15:00 Triaging problems and focusing 100% of resources on the current major issues, one at a time16:30 Doubling down on what’s already working, rather than fixing what’s not working, especially when it comes to customer acquisition19:20 Inviting frictionless feedback and doing customer support yourself as a founder: closing the gap between customer logic and founder logic20:20 Thinking about what you can be the best in the world at, and focusing all business resources on that one thing25:20 Understanding your value to your customers: sometimes it’s less about the actual service itself, and more about selling people back their time27:30 As a business that connects customers to contractors, catering to both sets of needs: customers want easy access to services, vendors want a sticky platform that enables fast payments, repeat business, marketing automation etc29:15 Creating incentives for vendors to perform well starts with accountability: providing performance metrics such as number of repeat bookings, reliability and quality ratings etc36:20 Identifying business problems and development goals, and implementing weekly strategies for success44:30 Creating one or two highly specific goals and getting your whole team to commit to them

About Aran:Aran Khanna has been labeled many things. Thought leader. Innovator. And (at times) troublemaker. Now, in his search to give technological control back to developers and business leaders, he’s added cloud management entrepreneur to that list as the Co-Founder & CEO of Archera, a company that helps organizations find cloud solutions that fit their companies. About Archera:Archera uses machine learning to help organizations automate & de-risk their cloud strategies. The company's goal is to put control back into the hands of developers and business leaders so they can use the resources they need when they need them, without hemorrhaging time and money. Founder Chats listeners get a free demo of Archera. Claim your perk.  

Show Notes:00:46 Starting your first business03:30 As a company, how do you provide value to your employees? Is offering high commissions sustainable?06:30 Losing a business isn’t the end of the world, there’s no shame in taking a job while you regroup09:20 Outsourcing labor in the days before Upwork etc11:25 Getting the mojo back: starting a second business after the first one failed13:30 Discovering a market for listing online businesses14:55 Collaborative team sales vs. individual sales - sharing sales commissions across the whole team16:00 How do you incentivize your team to act in the best interest of your company?18:35 Using equity and open strategy meetings to encourage all employees to work towards your company’s long-term success28:45 How to effectively implement sales goals: top down vs. bottom up approach32:20 Forecasting problems of the future to discover a new market niche34:00 Know what kind of entrepreneur you are and build a team with complementary skill sets and interests36:00 Challenges of working with a remote team based across the globe40:55 The value of community - sharing successes and failures with trusted business peers48:55 Making decisions on data vs. on gut52:10 Taking over an established business with an established team53:30 Differences between a founder-led business vs. a private equity-led business59:45 When to sell a SaaS business, why, and how

About Matija Kovač:Matija Kovač is the co-founder and head of development at Taia Translations, a company that bridges the gap between language barriers with the help of Artificial Intelligence and machine learning.About Taia Translations:Taia Translations is a modern translation platform, where we help companies translate their documents, websites, and other content with AI-assisted, human-perfected translations. If advanced neural machine translation is good enough, you can get your files translated, with formatting intact, in just a few seconds. But when you need a professional touch, you can order from a range of services, right inside the app.

About Reed-McGinley-Stempel:Reed is the Co-Founder and CEO of Stytch, a platform for passwordless authentication that makes it simple for apps and websites to retire the password.Before founding Stytch, Reed joined Plaid as one of their first 100 employees. He remained with them until they grew to a $5B+ valuation.With a selection of new products about to hit the market, Stytch is prepped to spearhead the transition to a passwordless future.About Stytch:Stytch improves security and user experience with passwordless authentication. Stytch is building the developer platform for authentication to enable teams to easily build experiences that delight their users. 

About Benn Stancil: Benn Stancil is co­founder and Chief Analyst at Mode Analytics, a company building collaborative tools for data scientists and analysts. Benn is responsible for overseeing Mode's internal analytics efforts, and is also an active contributor to the data science community. In addition, Benn provides strategic oversight and guidance to Mode's product direction as a member of the product leadership team.To stay up to date with Benn's writing on the modern data experience, check out his substack. About Mode: Mode helps businesses grow faster by speeding up answers to complex business problems and making the process more collaborative, so that everyone can build on the work of data analysts.  The Mode platform combines the best elements of Business Intelligence (ABI), Data Science (DS) and Machine Learning (ML) to empower data teams to answer impactful questions and collaborate on analysis across a range of business functions. In 2021, Mode has added a number of premiere enterprise companies to its customer base, which now includes Anheuser Busch, Bloomberg, Capital One, Conde Nast, Doordash, Lyft, Meredith Publishing, VMWare, and Zillow, among others.  At this point, 52% of the Forbes 500 have turned to Mode for help with data-driven decision making.  

About Mike Potter: Mike Potter is the co-founder and CEO of Rewind, the leading data backup and recovery provider for cloud and SaaS data. While studying Mechanical Engineering at McMaster University, Mike began his start-up career as the founder of InTheHack.com, one of the most popular sporting websites in Canada. Since founding Rewind in 2015, Mike has focused on building a company culture that values and respects employees. When Mike isn’t running backups, he can usually be found assembling LEGOs with his kids or walking his dogs.About Rewind: Since 2015, Rewind has been on a mission to help businesses protect their SaaS and cloud data. Today, over 100,000 customers in more than 100 countries use Rewind’s top-reviewed apps and support to ensure their software-as-a-service applications run uninterrupted. The Rewind platform enables companies to back up, restore, and copy the critical data that drives their business.About Baremetrics: Baremetrics provides real-time subscription metrics for teams built with Stripe, Shopify Partners, Braintree, Recurly, Chargebee, Google Play, and App Store Connect. In addition to providing metrics, Baremetrics is the industry leader in SaaS growth tools that prevent churn and help you make more. Start a free trial of Baremetrics today: https://app.baremetrics.com/users/sign_up