Mantle Mondays

Founders spend their lives pitching. Investors, customers, recruits, partners. The job is getting people to care. Few people do that better than Lianne Laing.Lianne is President of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute Foundation, one of Canada’s leading cardiac centres. Before that, she competed for Canada as a gymnast, earned an NCAA scholarship to UMass Amherst, and spent 20 years on Ottawa television, first as a sports anchor and then hosting the morning show. She landed on air at 22, five days after a reporter handed her his business card.In this episode, Mantle co-founder and CEO Amar Varma sits down with his longtime friend (they met in grade seven) to unpack the storytelling playbook Lianne built on camera and now uses with donors, CEOs, and decision makers.We cover:Why she never makes the ask, and what she does insteadWhy the follow-up question matters more than your list of questionsBuilding a personal brand on authenticity when everything online feels fakeWhy the people who show up for you are rarely the ones you expectFinding your “tease”: the one line that keeps people aroundA simple exercise for anyone who struggles to speak with confidence00:00 Intro01:54 From gymnast to broadcaster to foundation president03:42 The Heart Institute Foundation and why it’s personal11:16 Competing for Canada and the NCAA path14:12 Five days from press release to live TV17:09 Coachability and learning on live TV19:37 The advantage of having done hard things22:29 “I don’t make the ask”28:45 The follow-up question beats the script32:42 Building an authentic brand38:07 Your tribe isn’t who you think it is44:33 What’s your tease?47:36 The childhood bedroom exercise50:59 Growing up in a remarkable cohort57:01 Tennis, art, and Ottawa’s best-kept secret

In this episode of Mantle Mondays, Amar Varma sits down with Arif Bhanji (co-founder of Lazer Technologies) to share his entrepreneurial journey, insights into AI and product development, and the importance of culture, speed, and founder-led vision in building successful tech companies.00:00 Introducing Arif Bhanji04:52 The timing of entering the tech and AI space08:21 The mindset shift12:05 Building Fiix20:23 The impact of YC24:29 Operating at Silicon Valley speed in Canada30:47 Understanding the role of an FDE and team composition37:11 Hiring strategies and building a strong team43:42 Rapid fire & closing

Robert Saunders grew up building iOS apps in high school, worked on Shopify's platform and Shop App teams, then left a comfortable job to bet on a problem he'd just lived through: a slow, confusing, paper-based real estate closing on his first condo.That bet became Ownright, a digital real estate law firm that handles residential property closings, sales, and refinances across Ontario.In this episode, Amar Varma talks with Rob about his path from engineer to founder, and the growth journey since:The bad condo closing that became the idea for OwnrightScaling from one closing a day to 50Where Ownright is headed nextLearn more about Ownright: https://ownright.comManage your cap table with Mantle Equity: https://www.withmantle.com/equityFollow Mantle Mondays for weekly conversations with founders building through the AI shift.00:00 - Meet Rob Saunders08:28 - Building Ownright20:45 - Building inside a regulated industry36:35 - Scaling in the AI world44:12 - Support as a founder47:39 - The future of Ownright52:50 - Rapid fire & closing

Everyone romanticizes persistence. Almost nobody teaches founders how to pivot.Last October, Sam Pajot-Phipps and his co-founders (Kirk Simpson and Peter Carrescia of Wave fame) made the call to sunset goConfirm, a peer-to-peer identity verification product used across 600+ communities on Facebook and Reddit. Tens of thousands of people loved it. The metrics looked promising. And they shut it down anyway.In this episode, Sam breaks down exactly how they knew: the milestones that kept getting hit without compounding, the difference between a wedge and product market fit, and why the most uncomfortable decision is often the right one.Then we get into what they built next. Courtyard AI is betting that AI assistants are becoming the front door for how customers find businesses, and that small businesses (your local HVAC company, gym, restaurant) are dangerously underserved for that shift. Sam explains how Courtyard builds a living knowledge base that makes small businesses discoverable to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.Follow Mantle Mondays for weekly conversations with founders building through the AI shift.

Twenty years ago, Raj was in a room with Steve Jobs and a group of nervous AT&T executives. Jobs ended the tension by offering to hand them a billion dollars in cash on the spot. Raj watched that and spent the next two decades building companies of his own.He co-founded Localytics in 2008, two weeks before Lehman Brothers collapsed, bootstrapped it through the financial crisis, scaled it past $25 million in revenue, raised $60 million, and eventually sold it. Then built a second company acquired by Snapchat. Then spent a year at AWS as GM of Generative AI watching Fortune 500 companies build AI demos that never shipped.Now he's building again.In this episode, Raj traces the full arc. What it was like to work directly with Jobs multiple times a week before the iPhone launched. What that experience modeled about founder conviction. And how he carried it through every wave of tech that followed, mobile, analytics, cloud, and now AI.The new company is coming. This is the story of everything that led here.Follow Mantle Mondays for weekly conversations with founders building at the edge.