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Fund/Build/Scale

Walter Thompson

After working for years in early-stage startups and as a journalist, here are three hard truths I’ve learned:

1. Success in Silicon Valley hinges on connections, hard work and luck.
2. Startups often fail because founders lack fundamental business knowledge.
3. Real, actionable advice comes from those who’ve actually done it.

There’s no such thing as “founder DNA.” If you’re willing to take on risk and invest years of your life in something that has maybe a 10% chance of paying off — less if you’re a woman or person of color — you can be a startup founder.

Here’s why I founded Fund/Build/Scale:

1. To help founders make fewer mistakes.
2. To share successful strategies that can accelerate your go-to-market journey.
3. To inspire more people to see themselves as potential founders. There’s a lot of overlooked talent out there, and we are missing out.

This podcast is for anyone who’s interested in learning the basic skills required to launch a startup, secure initial funding and transform an idea into a sustainable business.

I’m talking to guests about everything: finding a co-founder, conducting customer discovery, recruiting early employees, developing a PLG strategy, fundraising when you’re outside a major tech hub — all of it.

Interested? Subscribe to Fund/Build/Scale on all major platforms and follow the podcast on LinkedIn to get articles, excerpts, transcripts and more.

Fund/Build/Scale is a production of Truth and Soul Media LLC.
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  • 26 episodes
  • Avg 42 min
  • English

Episodes 26

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  • S2 · E101
    May 20 · 51 min

    How AI-Native Startups Actually Get Built

    What does it actually mean to build an AI-native company? In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I talk with True Ventures Managing Partner Puneet Agarwal and Gather CEO/co-founder Mayank Mehta about how the startup evolved from an AI-powered customer feedback idea into a broader research and content platform for marketing teams. We get into founder conviction before product-market fit, what investors actually look for when there’s little external signal, how the company reshaped its go-to-market strategy after realizing the original motion wasn’t working, and why Mayank rebuilt major parts of the business around AI workflows in real time. There’s also a very tactical discussion about customer discovery, early hiring, AI-native operations, and a weekend growth experiment that produced more meetings in two weeks than the previous year of outbound efforts combined. RUNTIME 51:33 EPISODE BREAKDOWN 03:18 What True Ventures Looks For at Seed 07:00 What Gather Actually Does 11:42 The Five-Slide Seed Pitch 17:21 What They Got Wrong Early 21:06 Rebuilding the Company Around AI 33:53 The Weekend GTM Experiment That Changed the Company 36:56 How Investors Read Founders Who Don’t Have Signal 41:15 Tactical Advice for First-Time Founders 49:18 One Experiment Founders Can Run This Week LINKS Puneet Agarwal Mayank Mehta Gather True Ventures Gather Growth Platform SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw Thanks for listening! – Walter

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  • S2 · E100
    May 19 · 56 min

    Why Great Founders Are “Angry at the Problem”

    For this episode, I interviewed Eugene Malobrodsky, partner at One Way Ventures and former founder of AnchorFree, the company behind HotSpot Shield, one of the first consumer VPN products to scale globally. Before becoming a VC, Eugene spent 15 years building and scaling a startup through the 2008 financial crisis, painful layoffs, difficult fundraising environments, and the long grind from idea to acquisition. Today, he backs immigrant founders building applied AI, deep tech, fintech, healthcare, and enterprise startups at the pre-seed and seed stage. Topics include: Why many founders become founders for the wrong reasons What venture capitalists really mean when they talk about “100x outcomes” How to think about fundraising runway and dilution Why technical founders often struggle with storytelling What makes a startup venture-backable versus a profitable lifestyle business The most common mistakes early technical teams make How investors evaluate first-time founders with no track record Why customer discovery matters more than building features too early Why the best founders are often “angry at the problem” they’re trying to solve He also spoke about what immigrant entrepreneurs misunderstand about networking in Silicon Valley, and the growing uncertainty around H-1B visas and startup immigration policy. RUNTIME 56:28 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (2:13) "I'm just not great at following directions and working for somebody else." (5:44) How Working in VC Changed His Thinking (7:42) What Founders Misunderstand About VC Funds (20:53) A Practical Framework for Seed-stage Fundraising (25:50) What Makes Him Take the Meeting (31:19) Where One Way Ventures is Betting in Deep Tech (35:11) The Most Common Mistakes Technical Teams Make (38:23) Why Founders Need a 90-second Story (43:16) Growing Uncertainty for Immigrant Tech Workers and Founders (51:33) Practical Networking Advice for First-time Founders (54:38) The One Question H1-B Candidates Should Ask the CEO During an Interview LINKS Eugene Malobrodsky One Way Ventures Investing in Funds vs Investing as an Angel One Way Ventures Expands to San Francisco from Boston with Eugene Malobrodsky, Co-founder of Consumer Privacy Company AnchorFree, Joining as Partner SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw Thanks for listening! – Walter

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  • S2 · E99
    May 6 · 16 min

    Before There Is Proof: Build a Startup Story That Shows You Can Execute

    A lot of early-stage founders can explain their company five different ways — and all five might be technically correct. The problem is that often, those answers don’t fully line up. That gap in a startup’s narrative creates friction. Investors may understand the problem but still don’t feel like the story lands. Candidates may understand the product, but they’re not fully on board with the mission. Customers may hear the explanation but still struggle to repeat it clearly. I’ve been inside meetings where the CTO described the company’s core value one way and the CEO had a different take. In this episode, I break down the “narrative gap”: the distance between what a founder knows and what everyone else understands. I explain why technical founders often struggle to communicate even when they deeply understand their business and share several diagnostic frameworks you can use to test whether your story gives customers, investors, hires, and reporters confidence that you can execute. RUNTIME 16:55 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (1:52) Narrative is Not Decorative. Narrative is Load-bearing. (3:30) Founder Diagnostics: 3 Questions That Pressure-test Your Story (4:49) Your Message Is Not Your Pitch (6:06) A Bridge Is Not A Destination (7:42) Find The One Thing That Carries The Most Weight (8:57) Ask, "What breaks without you?" (10:30) Separate History From Story (11:25) What's the First Sentence of Your Startup's Story? (12:12) Pressure-test Your First Sentence In Different Rooms (13:59) Putting It Together: Final Founder-narrative Diagnostic (15:11) Use This Episode To Start Framing Your Narrative I work with early-stage founders on narrative framing, media prep, fundraising communication, and public-facing storytelling. This is foundational work that helps your message hold up before investors, customers, candidates, reporters, and conference audiences. If you’re getting ready to raise, hire, pitch, launch, or speak publicly, reach out: fundbuildscale@gmail.com SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw Thanks for listening! – Walter.

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  • S2 · E98
    April 28 · 31 min

    How to Hire Your First Offshore Team Without Screwing It Up

    Hiring is one of the hardest things for first-time founders to get right, especially if you’re building a distributed team that spans the globe. For this episode, I spoke to Isaac Saul Kassab, co-founder of Pearl Talent, a recruiting firm that helps startups hire offshore teams. We break down the underlying hiring frameworks founders can actually use, whether you’re hiring locally or globally. We get into how to write tighter job descriptions, evaluating candidates beyond their resumes, and why so many founders waste time interviewing the wrong people. Isaac also walks through how he thinks about onboarding as a filtering mechanism and why early hiring mistakes are often unavoidable (but manageable if you move quickly). If you’re building your first team — or trying to fix a hiring process that just isn’t working — this episode gives you a practical starting point. How to define a role around outcomes instead of responsibilities Why you should cut 30–40% from your job description before you post it The interview questions that surface real signal (and filter out noise) How to assess curiosity, coachability, and long-term fit Why onboarding should be designed to expose failure early The most common mistakes founders make when hiring offshore What kind of hiring failure rate to expect as a first-time founder RUNTIME 31:31 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (3:32) The Hiring Problem That Created Pearl Talent (9:56) How to Fix a Broken Hiring Process (Sourcing, Vetting, Onboarding) (14:08) How to Evaluate Candidates Beyond the Resume (17:25) Why Most Founders Hire the Wrong People (22:05) “If You Don’t Invest in the Person, You Get Failure” (25:29) Your First Offshore Hire: Start by Working Backwards (28:18) A Simple Hiring Playbook You Can Use Tomorrow LINKS Pearl Talent Isaac Saul Kassab Monty Ngan SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw Thanks for listening! – Walter

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  • S2 · E97
    April 18 · 42 min

    How Technical Founders Win the First 5 Minutes With Investors

    Technical founders don’t usually struggle with what they’re building. They struggle with explaining it clearly, quickly, and in a way that makes someone want to invest. In this episode, I spoke with Sheena Jindal, Managing Partner and Founder of Sugar Free Capital, about how technical founders can de-risk themselves before they ever get on a call with a VC. Sheena meets hundreds of founders each quarter and often decides within the first 30 seconds whether a conversation is worth continuing. That makes the early moments of a pitch — how you show up, how you frame the problem, and how you explain your edge — far more important than most founders realize. We cover: How to use the first five minutes of a pitch to earn a second meeting The most common mistakes technical founders make with investors How to translate complex technology into a clear, compelling story What actually counts as a defensible moat in an AI-driven market How to think about investor fit and building the right cap table What successful founders do in the first 90 days after raising capital This is a tactical conversation for founders building in deep tech, AI, and infrastructure, especially those without a built-in network or fundraising playbook. RUNTIME 42:54 EPISODE BREAKDOWN (3:31) Overview of Sugar Free Capital (9:36) How to Prepare for Your First Investor Meeting (12:19) Common Mistakes Technical Founders Make With Investors (16:31) How Inauthenticity Sabotages Founders (19:42) Bridging the Gap Between Deep Tech and Clear Storytelling (24:19) How Technical Founders Should Find the Right Investors (30:12) What Successful Founders Do in the First 90 Days After a Raise (34:18) How Top Technical Founders Show Up in the Room (36:10) From First Meeting to Term Sheet: What to Expect (39:20) Rapid Fire: Six Questions in Four Minutes LINKS Sheena Jindal Sugar Free Capital Sugar Free Capital raises $32M inaugural fund to back early-stage MIT founders, 10/6/25, TechCrunch SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw Thanks for listening! – Walter

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  • S2 · E96
    February 20 · 52 min

    Don’t Wait for the IPO: How Tech Employees Actually Get Liquid

    Startup employees are encouraged to believe in the mission. But IPO timelines now stretch well past a decade — and many never happen at all. In this episode, Ben Black, co-founder and managing director of Akkadian Ventures, explains how tech workers can think more strategically about the equity they’ve helped create. Drawing on more than 750 secondary transactions, Ben walks through how employees can evaluate a company’s liquidity posture before accepting an offer, exercise options intelligently, understand the real value of their shares, and access secondary buyers — whether through structured programs or more proactive approaches. We also dig into the psychological side of selling: when to take money off the table, how to avoid overestimating future upside, and why “loyalty” shouldn’t mean ignoring your own financial reality. Ben shares real-world examples of employees using secondaries to fund major life events — and even to bootstrap their own companies so they can retain more ownership and control from day one. Founders and VCs get a lot of attention for the risks they take. This episode is about the people who often take just as much risk with far less margin for error. * Information offered is for educational purposes and should not be considered financial advice. RUNTIME 52:37 BREAKDOWN (2:12) How Ben got into the secondary market and founded Akkadian (5:33) “The vast majority of really good companies now have secondary programs.” (8:39) Secondaries generate “a very significant part of the return of the large funds.” (9:57) Why are most companies still on a four-year vesting cliff? (12:55) Things to consider when you’re 25% vested (15:22) Why so many tech workers never exercise their vested options (16:49) A framework for identifying the *right* time to sell (21:26) How to access the secondary market if your company doesn’t offer a structured program (30:09) “I do see a lot of bad behavior among employees… using information that they’re not supposed to use.” (32:06) Startup employees: cultivate a strong relationship with your CFO (34:08) The #1 reason why employees sell secondaries (and a few edge cases) (38:44) “You have to be really skeptical, and you need to take a lot of shots on goal.” (45:11) How many founders are bootstrapping startups using the secondary market? (48:44) How long does it take to get liquid? LINKS Ben Black Akkadian Venture Capital IPO markets look primed to accelerate in 2026, pwc, 12/12/2025 SUBSCRIBE 📥 Get the Fund/Build/Scale newsletter on Beehiiv: https://fundbuildscale.beehiiv.com/ 📸 Follow Fund/Build/Scale on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fundbuildscale/ 📺 Watch Fund/Build/Scale on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFFH4cs2B1BKatPGs8SFRJw Thanks for listening! – Walter.

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