Found

Ben Lamm is no stranger to starting an interesting company but Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first de-extinction company is definitely the most sci-fi startup we’ve seen yet. This week on Found he talks with Darrell and Becca about what bringing back the infamous Wholly Mammoth means for conservation, how they secured VC funding despite being a long way away from profitability, and why they structure the company like a typical SaaS startup. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

Welcome back to Found, the TechCrunch podcast where you hear the stories behind the startups from the entrepreneurs themselves. This week we’re talking to Teddy Solomon, the co-founder of Fizz, a social media app aimed at college students focusing on building community on campus. For this interview, we’re joined by TechCrunch social media expert, Amanda Silberling. Darrell, Amanda, and Teddy discuss what Gen Z is looking for in their social media, how to thoroughly moderate the platform, and how this kind of community building could go far beyond colleges.Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

While working on developing the iPhone and then going on to co-found Nest, Matt Rogers became an expert in changing consumer behavior on a mass scale by creating products that seamlessly fit into everyday life. In his newest venture, he’s turned his sights to solving food waste starting in the kitchen. Mill sends customers a trash can that dries and shrinks kitchen scraps so they can be sent back to  be used for animal feed. In this episode, Matt, Darrell, and Becca talk about thinking through every part of the customer experience from packaging to sending back their food waste, why he prefers starting a company to investing in one, and what decisions he thinks defined his previous companies.Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s next for their company and get insight from TechCrunch staff, VCs, and audience members on why they were the right choice.Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast..

Last year when we talked to Alice Albrecht from Re:collect, the Found team couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities of a tool like Re:collect, so we're sharing this episode again. Re:collect is a software tool that augments creativity by helping people focus, recall, and connects their ideas. The conversation covered a lot of ground from how to hone your pitch when your product is so cerebral, how technology can help creativity but Alice argues will never replace it, and how developing AI requires building safeguards from the jump.Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode three. It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s next for their company and get insight from TechCrunch staff, VCs, and audience members on why they were the right choice.New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast..

Michael Chime, the co-founder and CEO of Prepared, is leading the charge to modernize 911 calls by providing access to video and photos. Most people are calling in emergencies with their smartphones so the Prepared team is working to help dispatchers have all the data possible to relay to first responders. In today’s episode, they talk about implementing this new tech in an industry that’s slow to innovate, navigating privacy concerns when capturing and collecting videos of emergencies, and how he’s grown into the CEO role as the company has expanded. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn Instagram

Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode two. In the second episode of Inside Startup Battlefield, we take a trip to TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 to hear pitches from the top five companies: Aaron Hall from Intropic Materials, Elizabeth Lawler from App Map, Chad Mason from Advanced Ionics, Sheeba Dawood from Minerva Lithium, Tim Lichti from Swap Robotics. We get to know the companies and the unique problems they’re solving through their pitches and the judges’ follow-up questions. Plus we hear from our host and Battlefield Editor, Neesha Tambe, about what working with each company was like.New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast..

This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Alex Rappaport, the CEO and co-founder of ZwitterCo, a startup that develops technology that filters waste water. Alex talked about how his childhood on the Potomac river inspired his future career in clean water. He also talked about what it was like to build a commercial business off of existing lab research. Lastly, he talks about his fundraising journey and how amateur boxing injuries may have helped his pitch.Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

Check out the newest podcast from the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Inside Startup Battlefield, the four-part series that takes you behind TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition. In this episode, our host and Startup Battlefield Editor Neesha Tambe breaks down how the Battlefield companies are selected for the TechCrunch Disrupt stage. Then we take a deep dive into what makes a pitch perfect with pitch coach and TechCrunch writer Haje Jan Kamps and Startup Battlefield judge and VC Nisha Dua. You’ll also hear from: Julia Somerdin from Labby, Young-Jae Kim and Tara Peters from Anthill, Quddus Pativada from Digest AI, Blessing Adesiyan from Mother honestly, Hikari Senju from Omneky, Mitch Tolson from Ally robotics, Elizabeth Lawler from App map, Aaron Hall from Intropic materials. Sheeba Dawood from Minerva.New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.

This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Ourside founder and CEO Keta Burke-Williams. They get into what it takes to innovate in a historically luxury industry, the challenges of raising capital as a Balck female solo founder with a consumer startup and, most importantly, how many solid colognes Darrell travels with. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

Rosie Nguyen (or JasmineRiceGirl as her fans know her) is the co-founder and CMO of  PG-13ish content-creating platform Fanhouse. In this episode, Rosie talks with Darrell and Becca about her sometimes-scary experiences creating content on Twitch and OnlyFans that inspired the Fanhouse founding team to build a safer place for creators to monetize their content, how having a creator as a co-founder helped with their fundraising process, and how she balances being a first-time founder with building her community. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Klarna’s Co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski to talk about how the company is expanding beyond by now pay later space to become a neobank. Sebastian walks us through his European startup journey, breaking into the US market, how the importance of calm leadership through a market downturn, and what’s next for Klarna. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

Mir Hwang is the co-founder and CEO of GigFinesse. Mir talks about how his struggles to book music gigs as a teenager pushed him to launch the company that connects artists with venues for live shows. Mir also talked about how hard it was to steer the live music-focused business through the pandemic in an industry that was reticent to adopt tech to begin with. Plus, we learn about a fun venue that couldn't be more perfect for Darrell's future poetry residence.Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

This week we’re mixing it up on Found and welcoming special guest cohost, Neesha Tambe, the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Editor. And we happen to be talking with Sheeba Dawood, the co-founder and CEO of Minerva Lithium—the 2022 Startup Battlefield winner. Minerva Lithium is a clean energy technology that has developed a Nano Mosaic membrane filter system for critical materials extraction from non-traditional water resources. In this conversation, Sheeba speaks candidly about the struggles she’s faced as a woman of color trying to innovate in the mineral manufacturing industry and what’s next for the company coming off of several pitch competition wins.Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Brex co-founder and co-CEO Henrique Dubugras to chat about his corporate credit card and expense management startup. Henrique talked about what made him and his co-founder (Pedro Franceschi) decide to launch the company and why the friends, who met online as teenagers, decided to be co-CEOs. Henrique also talks about how Brex navigated changes at the startup this year, and how he personally handled layoffs, all while Darrell and Becca do a questionable job of hiding their disdain for Brex’s legacy competitor.Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FoundSubscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

Happy holidays! The found crew is taking a week off to relax so we are throwing it back to our anniversary episode. To celebrate our anniversary, we welcomed back four founders whose stories really stuck with us since we talked to them. In what Jordan called a “founder smoothie”, we talked with Brie Code from TRU LUV who was on our second episode, Earl Cole from SMART Tire Company who was on the following episode, as well as Aditi Shekar from Zeta, and Jelani Memory from A Kids Company About who joined us a few months later. They talk about perspective shifts they’ve experienced in the past year, their different takes on fundraising, and how they stay true to their respective core missions. Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FOUND.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.comCall us and leave a voicemail at (510) 936-1618

Welcome back to found, the Stories behind the startups. This week co-hosts Darrell Etherington and Becca Szkutak talk with Alice Albrecht from Re:collect, a software tool that augments creativity by helping people focus, recall, and connect their ideas. The conversation covered a lot of ground from how to hone your pitch when your product is so cerebral, how technology can help creativity but Alice argues will never replace it, and how developing AI requires building safeguards from the jump.Take our listener survey and let us know a bit about yourself and what you think of FoundSubscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

Take our listener survey for a chance to win a free year of TC+ at bit.ly/tcpodsurvey.When Ceryl Sew Hoy had her first child, she discovered the importance of the infant gut microbiome. As a research-driven entrepreneur, she learned everything she could about gut health and how to help infants avoid the chronic health issues that occur if they don’t receive the essential microbiomes from the mother. Tiny Health was started to fill a gap in OBGYN care and provide the first-ever gut health test for babies and toddlers along with educational materials needed to course correct and set up infants for optimal gut health.  Darrell, Becca, and Cheryl also talk about being a product-focused founder, building customer trust, and Darrell’s constant tummy aches. Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com

We’re so excited to be back with new episodes of Found and to introduce you to our brilliant new co-host Becca Szkutak! In this episode, we talk with Valentina Milanova, the founder and CEO of Daye, a gynecological health company that’s working to close the gender pain gap and raise industry standards when it comes to women’s health products.While researching menstrual pain relief and tampon manufacturing, Valentina found there was a shocking lack of innovation, research, and health and safety standards in gynecological products. So she started Daye and created the most absorbent organic tampon on the market and the only one that uses CBD to relieve menstrual pain that was designed with women in mind. Within the company,  Valentina is infusing her values into every aspect of the business from implementing a 4-day work week to improve mental health to hiring survivors of human trafficking to work in their manufacturing centers. In this episode, we  also touch on the challenges of fundraising when your product requires you to say “vaginal canal” at least once in your pitch, why Valentina will not be a serial entrepreneur, and why they don’t keep any tampon trade secrets.Subscribe to Found to hear more stories from founders each week.Connect with us:On TwitterOn InstagramVia email: found@techcrunch.com