Podcasts about whispered

Mason and Ireland are both out today, so Marcas Grant and Andy Kamenetzky are in! The guys tip off the show with the Thunder taking a 3-2 series lead over the Spurs. Did Wemby order a hit on the Thunder? Who has been the MVP of the Western Conference Finals right now? Are the Thunder the new ‘Villains' of the NBA? Ice Breakers! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andy Mowat has run RevOps at four unicorns, and between every role he's gone out and built something new. His latest is Whispered, an AI platform that helps top GTM execs build their careers through shared insights, warm introductions, and access to the roles that never get posted.In this episode, Andy and Justin get into why the entire GTM tech stack is heading for a two-year rebuild, what the move to a data-warehouse-first model means for RevOps teams, and why smaller companies are suddenly more nimble than the enterprise. Andy shares hard-won lessons from scaling Culture Amp, including the speed-to-lead system he built around time-critical leads and the market-maturity question he buried in the win-loss forms. They also dig into whether the fractional exec wave is real, why thoughtful gifting and distinctive events still beat automated outbound, and what it actually feels like to run a proactive job search at the VP level for the first time.A candid conversation between two friends about category strategy, positioning, and building a career in go-to-market when the ground keeps shifting.Buzzsprout Chapter Markers00:00 — Intro: how Justin and Andy met around Culture Amp 01:40 — Andy's background: RevOps at four unicorns, and why he keeps building 03:30 — Founders as a hiring profile, and the trap of "ambiguous roles" 05:30 — Rebuilding the GTM tech stack: data warehouse first, the semantic layer, and two years of turmoil 07:00 — The give-to-get ratio and why AI-era outbound still comes down to better emails 08:30 — Strategic gifting, distinctive events, and the Wisconsin business school cold open 11:00 — Podcasts as relationship engines, not just content 11:30 — Inside Culture Amp: 180 events a year and the speed-to-lead system 13:00 — The multi-prospect demo experiment, and the market-maturity question that predicts a category's breakout14:45 — The fractional exec wave: real shift or euphemism for "between jobs"16:15 — Why early-stage marketing needs people to "grok what you do" before top of funnel 18:00 — What's next for Whispered: the network, the community, and the roles that get whispered

What should have been a quiet morning alone in her boyfriend's basement bedroom turned into an experience she still can't fully explain. Half asleep and drifting in and out of consciousness, she first heard someone softly whispering her name from inches away. At first, she assumed it was her boyfriend trying to wake her.Then she remembered he'd left for work hours earlier.Moments later, the bed shifted beneath her as though someone had sat down beside her in the dark. Whatever it was slowly moved closer and closer until she finally forced herself awake—only to discover the room was completely empty.But after remembering the tragic story tied to the house itself, she began to wonder if she really had been alone that morning. And whether something in that basement bedroom still believed it lived there.#RealGhostStories #ParanormalPodcast #HauntedBedroom #GhostStory #SleepParalysisOrGhost #ParanormalEncounter #HauntedHouse #TrueGhostStory #ShadowPresence #ThingsInTheDarkLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

Lauren's Little Bedtime Stories Deep in Fernhollow forest, a tiny shy dragon named Pip has always believed her fire isn't real fire at all — just small, soft sparks that float gently on the air and quietly go out. When the big dragons all fly off to their annual Night Gathering and a lost fox kit is left crying alone in the fog, Pip and her fearless salamander companion Nessa venture out into the dark to help. What follows is a gentle, funny journey across slippery stones and past a family of very opinionated glow-beetles — and a quiet discovery that sometimes the smallest, steadiest light is exactly the right kind. Every Lauren's Little Bedtime Story includes: Calming Relaxation: Gentle breathing exercises to help your body relax. Original Bedtime Lullaby: Wind-down time as Lauren sings you to sleep. A Full Original Bedtime Story: A whimsical story read aloud by Lauren.

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Episode 4 - "The Whispered One Awaits" SideQuests Live DnD 2026 Campaign Prologue finale!  Join us live on Twitch, YouTube or catch the VOD on Youtube, or listen in on any of the podcast places (iTunes, iheart radio, podbean, etc).  Attributions:  ----------------------- MUSIC:  All livestream has music which is Creative Commons, individually attributed within the stream (live display) and in the credit roll at the end of the episode. *This RPG and story is UNOFFICIAL CONTENT by SideQuests Live (Podcast, Stream, etc.) and is governed by the Wizards of the Coast's Fan Content Policy: https://company.wizards.com/en/legal/fancontentpolicy Vecna: Nest of the Eldritch Eye  and Vecna: Eve of Ruin are Copyrights by Wizards of the Coast LLC (Wizards) & Dndbeyond... Images and specific content are theirs and not ours unless otherwise noted.  SideQuests Live is not endorsed by or affliated with any copyright holders beyond the Fan content policy guidelines. Prologue:  Vecna: Nest of the Eldritch Eye: Lead Designer: Christopher Perkins Art Director: Fury Galuzzi Cover Illustrator: Greg Staples NOT AFFILIATED - SideQuests Live and our podcasts/streams/videos in our campaigns are UNOFFICIAL CONTENT  - - - - - - - - - - - -  CAST - - - - - - - - - - -  Bela    Gordon Judy Steve Todd ---------------- *Guest contributors/chatters on the live stream are choosing to share their  content/voices/opinions live and allow their content to be streamed Where possible all efforts are made to make this stream/video family friendly but in the nature of live productions  sometimes content that isn't sanctioned or endorsed. All efforts will be made to limit such things however  VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED   This stream/video is NOT intended for children - Production - Todd Caryl - AUDIO - All music is under Creative Commons License 4.0 or Royalty Free Music Here are some Select attributions - see scrollbar and end credits of each video for specific song attributions:  Some Music by Incompetech: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/music.html  All Incompetech music is under Creative Commons License 4.0 Some Music by Kai Engel: Used under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License  http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Kai_Engel/  LOTS of music by artists from Freemusicarchive.org: http://freemusicarchive.org/     Used under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License  Some music from https://NCS.io    https://www.youtube.com/user/NoCopyrightSounds  Some music from Streemtunes https://www.streemtunes.com/  Lots of music by Sascha Ende ( https://www.sascha-ende.de ) Lots of Music from https://filmmusic.io  LOTS of music by Alexander Nakarada ( https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/ ) "Dawn" by Alexander Nakarada (https://www.serpentsoundstudios.com/) Used under Licence: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Music and Sound by Syrinscape:  Syrinscape Sci-Fi https://store.syrinscape.com/what-is-syrinscape/?att  'Because Epic games need Epic game sounds' All Syrinscape audio is under Creative Commons License  Additional Music and Sound by "Tabletop audio": https://tabletopaudio.com/   All "Tabletop audio" music is under Creative Commons License  IMAGES:  Images are of the specific games - and are the creative property of those respective games. Other images used are from pixabay.com and are used as copyright free or  creative commons licenses respectively Some video, stingers, alerts and overlays are from Nerd Or Die, and Psychodope and were purchased for use. Thanks so much for the HOURS of images, music and audio! DISCLAIMERS:  This stream/video is not designed for children. Viewer discretion is advised. All Dungeons & Dragons content and images are copyright of Wizards of the Coast. © 1995-2026 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Used under Fan Content Policy. All Shadowrun content and images are copyright of Catalyst games. © 2001-2013 The Topps Company,  Inc. Shadowrun is a registered trademark of The Topps Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. And finally THIS specific stream content is by Sidequests Live, and our performers and guests. The opinions expressed are those of the participants and do not reflect those of the game/copyright holders. ©2026 Sidequests Live Thanks very much to Family, Friends, Followers & Nerds Everywhere Instagram: @SidequestsLive #game #podcast #dungeonsanddragons #rpg #interactive #actualplay #tabletop #dnd

Access all 430+ episodes of Sleep Whispers (including lots of Story Time, Trivia Time, & Whisperpedia episodes) by becoming a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!). OneSkin: Get 15% off with the code WHISPERS at https://www.oneskin.co/WHISPERS #oneskinpod Become a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!) and enjoy over 600 total episodes from these podcasts: … Continue reading Whisperpedia | History of Armor (A167) | Whispered Bedtime Sleep Stories

Myla is an observant kid; she doesn't look down at screens all day, distracted. She is always looking up and full of wonder; that's how she meets the Moon Princess and is given a magical gift!Subscribe for more episodes!

Access all 430+ episodes of Sleep Whispers (including lots of Story Time, Trivia Time, & Whisperpedia episodes) by becoming a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!). OneSkin: Get 15% off with the code WHISPERS at https://www.oneskin.co/WHISPERS #oneskinpod Become a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!) and enjoy over 600 total episodes from these podcasts: … Continue reading Trivia Time | 30 More Curious Questions & Answers (A208) | Whispered Bedtime Sleep Stories

In the quiet village, there is a house that holds an emotional imprint - an echo of unfinished words.In this reflective tale Nell Rowan encounters a man returning to the house where his mother passed after hearing his final words to her that were said in frustration.It's not a ghost story, but a story of facing regret, forgiveness and what lingers when things are left unsaid. A calm thought provoking listen about human emotion and closure.

Join @Eric, @Shelley Wynter, @Wes Moss, @Bill Crane, @TimAndrewsHere, @Autopritts, @JaredYamamoto, Greg, and George LIVE on 95.5 WSB from 3pm-7pm as they chat about the Georgia's QR codes , the baby Jessica bust, Shelley and Eric's road trip, and so much more! *New episodes of our sister shows: The Popcast with Tim Andrews and The Nightcap with Jared Yamamoto are available as well!

The full version of this episode (2 Hours & Ad-free) is available for Silk+ Members (FREE for a limited time!) and includes access to 600 more episodes from these podcasts: Sleep Whispers (430+ episodes) Calm History (100+ episodes) ASMR Sleep Station (50+ episodes) 1 & 8-Hour Nature Sounds (50+ episodes) 1 & 8-Hour Background Sounds (30 episodes) History Showcase (25+ episodes) Extended … Continue reading *Sample* | 2-Hours of Curious Quotes (Bonus Episode #125) | Whispered Bedtime Sleep Stories

Access all 430+ episodes of Sleep Whispers (including lots of Story Time, Trivia Time, & Whisperpedia episodes) by becoming a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!). Try the podcast, Sleep With Me: https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/subscribe/ Become a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!) and enjoy over 600 total episodes from these podcasts: Sleep Whispers (430+ episodes) Calm … Continue reading Story Time | “The Man and the Butterfly” by L. Frank Baum (A158) | Whispered Bedtime Sleep Stories

Supporta BLMP genom att bli en patron! Spana in de olika alternativen på http://www.patreon.com/blmetalpodcast Eller bidra genom att swisha: 0708-961174 Oboy oboy! Ett nytt avsnitt! Mycket missnöje! Playlist: Lex Legion - Sleep Eternally Blisterous - Embryotomy Drudkh - Fallen Blossom Traskfolket - Dagmar Tyrann - Born For Hell Via Doloris - For The Glory Whispered - Ikikaere Revenge - War (Bathory cover) I samarbete med Medborgarskolan.

Ep #350 - Whispered Truths - An Interview with poet and photographer, Safire Rose. I am delighted to welcome, Safire Rose, author of Rose Petals: 108 Whispered Truths from the Soul of the Rose, to Empowering Chats. This interview begins with the question, Why that title? Safire shares her story of the inspiration of the book title arriving directly from the roses which she loves. She not only writes about roses she also photos them. So the idea came from both her photography of roses and from her writing, the poetry that inspires her. Safire chose 108 roses from her photography portfolio and then meditated with each image, intuiting a message from each rose.The best way to experience the book, according to Safire is to look at the photo of the rose to that inspired the reading and see the petals and other details captured in the image as you allow it to speak to you. By encountering nature in this way, whether through a rose, a redwood tree or other plant you allow yourself to step into relationship with the flower, the tree or nature in general to receive the presence. Energetically you will feel a connection. It's about opening up your senses and experiencing a mystical, multi-dimensional relationship with yourself. Safire says it can be a transcending experience – how I believe we were meant to live life – to be present and in the moment with what is – Safire's book is wonderful in bringing you into the moment of presence. It is a contemplative book and one that inspires emotional connection. It is easy to get distracted by the world and have our attention robbed of where it truly belongs and so I believe it is more important than ever to make time for your dreams and your intentions to come to fruition. Safire Rose's book, is one way to tap into your inspiration and accept the invitation to spend more time with yourself in nature. To learn more about Safire Rose and her book visit: Safire-Rose.com To learn more about how I show up in the world I invite you to visit: SusanBurrell.com

Sleep AI is building the world's largest sleep intelligence platform, with over a billion hours of sleep data, connections to more than a million users, and 100+ published studies. The company operates a B2B model providing sleep data infrastructure through three channels: R&D services for product validation, reimbursed digital therapeutics in Germany's healthcare system, and SDK/API partnerships that embed sleep intelligence into health apps. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, I sat down with Colin Lawlor, CEO and Founder of Sleep AI, to learn how the company transitioned from eight years of deep R&D to active commercialization and their strategy to reach a billion people through partnership distribution.Topics Discussed:The $100 billion sleep market's validation gap: only 300 of 10,000 sleep products have scientific measurementSleep AI's data collection engine: half a million data points per user annually from phones, wearables, and predictive modelsGermany's regulatory breakthrough: achieving full reimbursement for 74 million people without prescription requirementsThe device-agnostic platform strategy connecting to any data source to maximize distribution reachTransitioning from pure R&D focus to building sales, marketing, and PR functions for the first timeGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Time product-market readiness against defensible data moats, not funding cycles: Colin invested 8-9 years collecting a billion hours of sleep data and publishing 100+ studies before scaling commercialization. This created inbound demand from companies with unsolved problems and established technical credibility that competitors can't replicate quickly. For deep-tech B2B founders, premature go-to-market before achieving technical differentiation means competing on sales execution rather than product superiority. The German reimbursement approval—a multi-year regulatory process requiring robust clinical evidence—exemplifies outcomes only accessible with patience.Collapse the technical-commercial divide by embedding experts in revenue processes: Sleep AI's scientists participate in sales conversations from initial discovery through close. This isn't consultation—it's full integration. The cultural frame Colin established: "innovation and scientific breakthroughs are great if they have an impact, but if they stay in a box...they have no impact." For technical founders, this means your PhD-level team must own customer outcomes, not just product capabilities. If your best technical minds aren't in customer conversations, you're leaving competitive advantage on the table.Position as infrastructure when solving complex, multi-intervention problems: Colin recognized no single company can solve sleep comprehensively—it requires medical diagnosis, environmental optimization, behavioral coaching, and product interventions. Rather than attempting vertical integration, Sleep AI built horizontal infrastructure (SDK/API) that makes other health companies better. The insight: "We want to reach a billion people through the companies that they already trust by being their trusted sleep partner." Infrastructure plays generate winner-take-most outcomes in fragmented markets where solution complexity exceeds any single vendor's scope.//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I HireSenior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

DOSS is building the operations cloud for physical-products companies — procurement, inventory management, and order management unified on a modern data platform, positioned as the layer that sits around the ERP general ledger rather than replacing it. In this episode of BUILDERS, Co-Founder and CEO Wiley Jones gets specific about what 22 months in market actually taught him: why nine of those months were spent selling to the wrong customers, what a single blunt conversation forced them to shut down an entire product line, and the exact mental model shift required to move from founder-led sales to a scalable GTM motion.Topics Discussed:The "donut vs. donut hole" product framing — why DOSS deliberately stopped selling finance and accountingHow DOSS stress-tested its ICP by mapping slam-dunk wins against catastrophic failures — and what they cutThe ecosystem wake-up call from a former public-company CEO that changed DOSS's go-to-market architecture in a monthWhat founder-led sales actually has to unlearn — and why your reps aren't the problemHow to diagnose what kind of sales leader your company actually needs right nowWhy DOSS is going to coffee trade shows instead of SaaS conferences — and the field marketing logic behind it// Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Savvy Wealth is an AI-enabled platform for independent financial advisors — solo operators and small teams — that handles everything from CRM and billing to compliance, investment management, and financial planning. In this episode of BUILDERS, I sat down with Ritik Malhotra, Founder & CEO, to get into the GTM mechanics behind selling into one of the most trust-locked markets in financial services: advisors who don't just buy software — they move their entire business.Topics Discussed:What Ritik took — and deliberately inverted — from watching Brex scale from ~$5M to $100M in revenue in a single yearWhy Savvy's GTM motion is structurally closer to recruiting than B2B sales — and what that means for team designHow a data science-driven "likelihood to move" model shapes top-of-funnel targetingWhat's actually driving growth: brand trust and advisor word-of-mouth over outboundWhy cold email and conference booths underdelivered, and the experimentation framework Ritik runs insteadHow Savvy deliberately blends adjacent-industry sales talent with wealth management insidersWhy the "AI replaces the advisor" framing gets the value prop of human financial guidance fundamentally wrongThe long-term vision: a fully vertically integrated operating system for financial advisors, orchestrated by proactive AI agents// Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

My Cheating Wife Slipped Out Of Bed And Whispered Into Her Phone For Me To Come SoonBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-cheating-wives-and-girlfriends-stories-2026-true-cheating-stories-podcast--5689182/support.

Mehul spent over 20 years building cybersecurity products, including early time at Tenable where he watched the company scale from a scrappy startup to a billion-dollar platform. Now he's co-founding Quantro Security, which just came out of stealth with an AI agent platform built specifically for cyber defense. The core thesis: AI has reduced the cost of building attacks to near zero, and static rules-based defense tools weren't built for what's coming.Topics Discussed:How AI reduced the cost of exploit development and what that means for defendersWhy Quantro Security rejects CTEM, risk-based VM, and every existing categoryThe "user interface of record" positioning vs. the "system of record" frame most AI companies chaseThree competitive buckets: hyperscalers, siloed point tools, and internal build teamsWhy agents should be prompting humans, not the other way aroundThe vision for a small elite security team managing 50 to 100 purpose-built AI agentsKey Insights:AI-native offense requires AI-native defense. Mehul's core thesis isn't speculative — it's built on what he watched happen to his own craft. Writing vulnerability exploits once required deep skill and months of work. AI collapsed that barrier. "So now an attacker can essentially build a functional exploit with just a prompt." The implication for defenders is direct: the tools built for the old pace won't be sufficient for the new one.Rejecting every existing category. When Quantro came out of stealth, the obvious move was to slot into CTEM or risk-based vulnerability management. Mehul passed. "Are you a CTEM player? Are you a risk-based VM player? Are you VM player? Well, no, no, no, none of that." The existing categories imply replacing tools. Quantro's frame is different: become the connective layer on top of what customers already have.User interface of record, not system of record. Most AI companies pitch replacing core platforms. Quantro's pitch is the opposite: "We don't replace the tools. We just make their existing tools much more, much more effective." Enterprises aren't ripping out entrenched infrastructure. They want ROI from what they've already bought.The barbell competitive map. Mehul frames the landscape as a barbell: hyperscalers ("a mile wide, a millimeter deep") on one end, siloed point tools (deep in their own data, blind to organizational context) on the other. Quantro positions as the connective tissue between them.The 50% false positive tax. When Mehul talks to security prospects, the same reality surfaces: "Almost 50 % of the time is triaging false positives, reaching out to the people." Asset ownership is unclear. Handoffs break down. None of it moves the risk needle. The agents absorb that work.//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Topics Discussed:GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Signs God Is Revealing Your Purpose: www.curlynikki.comSupport the show: http://patreon.com/goodmornings

Market Logic Software sits at the intersection of market intelligence and enterprise AI — helping companies like Procter & Gamble and Unilever move from gut-feel decision-making to insights-driven operations. When Dirk Wolf stepped in as CEO five years ago, the business had impressive logos but a fundamental scaling problem: every customer had been co-built with, deeply customized, and operationally entangled. High retention masked an unsustainable model. In this episode of BUILDERS, Dirk breaks down how he restructured the GTM motion, made the deliberate choice to walk away from revenue that couldn't repeat, launched an AI product in Q2 2023 before most companies had a roadmap, and is now repositioning Market Logic as an agentic intelligence hub embedded inside enterprise infrastructure.Topics Discussed:The co-development trap: why deep enterprise relationships can become a scaling ceilingMaking the call to cut a government ARR contract to protect repeatabilityImplementing SaaS KPIs and customer segmentation from scratch inside an existing businessHow the marketing motion evolved — from executive roundtables to measured digital channelsBuilding a productive marketing-CFO relationship through outcomes and milestonesLaunching an AI product in Q2 2023 and tracking enterprise sentiment shift in real timeWhy the downstream ICP experiment failed and how they course-corrected fastThe vision for Market Logic as a proactive agentic system inside enterprise tech stacksGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:The co-development trap is a silent growth killer. Market Logic had strong retention and marquee customers — but had co-built so many bespoke solutions that the business couldn't replicate itself. No repeatable sales motion. No scalable delivery. When Dirk came in, he recognized that what looked like customer success was actually a ceiling. If your top accounts each required their own version of your product, you don't have a business yet — you have a services firm with SaaS ambitions. The fix starts with ruthless product scope decisions before you touch GTM.Cutting revenue is sometimes the GTM move. Dirk walked away from a US government contract — real ARR, on-prem, fully customized, no path to replication. The decision wasn't financial modeling, it was strategic clarity: you cannot build a repeatable motion while simultaneously maintaining one-off revenue that pulls engineering, CS, and leadership attention in a different direction. Most founders know this intellectually. Few actually do it. The willingness to let that revenue walk is what creates the conditions for scale.Segment by growth potential, not by decibel level. One of Dirk's first structural changes was introducing proper SaaS KPIs and customer segmentation — because without them, resources defaulted to whoever was loudest. That's almost always the smallest, most difficult accounts, not the ones with the most strategic upside. The discipline isn't just about where sales focuses. It cascades into product prioritization, CS allocation, and where leadership time actually goes. ICP isn't a marketing exercise — it's an operating model decision.// Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

C8 Health is solving a problem that costs hospitals billions: the implementation gap between medical knowledge and actual clinical practice. Despite hospitals investing heavily in clinical trials, licensing platforms like UpToDate and OpenEvidence, and creating comprehensive policies and guidelines, this knowledge remains siloed across 20+ disconnected systems per department. Operating across over 100 hospital systems including most top-40 US healthcare networks, C8 Health has become the standard platform for academic anesthesiology departments by making best-practice knowledge instantly accessible at the point of care. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, I sat down with Galia Rosen Schwarz, Co-Founder and CEO of C8 Health, to learn how the company evolved from a Geneva University Hospitals research project during COVID to building a land-and-expand motion that penetrates notoriously difficult enterprise healthcare logos through focused department-level entry.Topics DiscussedWhy hospitals struggle to operationalize best practices despite massive knowledge investmentsThe department-first penetration strategy that unlocked top-40 healthcare system logosHow high product engagement converted two non-paying pilots into 20+ qualified pipeline opportunities at a single conferenceMisalignment between founder value assumptions and actual buyer languageWhy 2-4 monthly micro-conferences outperform major industry events for qualified pipeline generationMeasuring everything: tracking conversion from leads through MQLs, SQLs, opportunities to closed dealsGTM Lessons For B2B FoundersUse department-level entry to crack enterprise healthcare logos: With only $90K in friends-and-family funding, C8 Health chose department deals over enterprise-wide deployments. This wasn't just about deal size—it was strategic penetration of logos that typically require 18-24 month sales cycles. Single departments provided faster procurement, immediate user feedback for product iteration, and internal advocates who later championed enterprise expansion. The land-and-expand data became their enterprise selling asset: C8-level executives see real usage metrics, clinician testimonials, and measured outcomes (reduced surgical site infections, shortened length of stay) from their own system before enterprise conversations begin. B2B founders facing long enterprise cycles should map department-level entry points that demonstrate ROI quickly while preserving expansion paths.Extract buyer language systematically—they sell differently than you think: C8 Health positioned around clinician benefits: easy knowledge access, time savings, and empowerment. Their champions sold it completely differently to peers: "administrative burden reduction" and "peace of mind that staff consistently follow our chosen best practices across every indication." This wasn't end-user value—it was management value that department heads actually budget for. Galia's insight: you must measure and message separately for buyers versus end users. B2B founders should implement structured win/loss interviews and case study processes specifically to capture verbatim buyer language, then test whether your current messaging actually resonates with how champions sell you internally.//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I HireSenior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Nauta is building the data infrastructure layer for global supply chain, starting with mid-market shippers who manage 600+ suppliers across 40+ countries but lack a single source of truth. Co-founded by Valentina Jordan, who spent six and a half years at Rappi, Nauta targets the $200M-$2B revenue segment where companies face enterprise-level complexity without enterprise resources. In this episode of BUILDERS, Valentina shares how Nauta moved from Excel automation to building data pipes that connect 12-13 stakeholders touching a single product—and why they refuse to run POCs.Topics Discussed:Why shippers with ERP, TMS, and WMS systems still run operations in ExcelThe tribal knowledge crisis: 20-30 year operators retiring with undocumented institutional knowledgeNauta's no-POC policy and why it requires contract exit clauses insteadThe cost reduction vs. revenue generation framework that escapes pilot purgatoryBuilding familiar interfaces (Excel-like tables) over novel UX for conservative industriesThe shift from hiding AI capabilities (January 2025) to leading with them (eight months later)GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Distinguish symptoms from root cause pain in discovery: Most enterprise buyers surface symptoms, not problems. A client reporting penalty costs isn't revealing the root issue—just downstream impact. Valentina uses the five whys methodology to drill into actual pain: "A client can tell me, hey, I'm paying X amount of dollars in penalties. That's not necessarily the root cause, it's just a symptom of the actual pain." This prevents building features that address surface-level complaints while missing the structural problem. The real issue might be data fragmentation across systems, lack of visibility into supplier performance, or decision-making bottlenecks—each requiring different solutions.Structure POC alternatives that demand mutual commitment: Nauta kills traditional POCs entirely because "it implies that they are testing us and that it's not a collaborative process." Instead, they offer contract exit clauses if expectations aren't met while requiring upfront commitment. This only works when you have proven results and can confidently deliver value. The insight: POCs create evaluator-vendor dynamics where the burden of proof sits entirely on you. Paid engagements with performance-based exits create partner dynamics where both parties invest in success. For early-stage companies without case studies, this won't work—but once you have repeatable results, test this approach.Layer revenue generation on top of cost reduction: Nauta starts every engagement with 3-4 cost reduction KPIs—penalties, reconciliation time, manual labor automation—then transitions to revenue generation through fill rate optimization and cash-on-cash improvements. "You need to go beyond just cutting costs. That way you transition from a nice to have to a must have." Supply chain has historically been viewed as a cost center; proving top-line impact changes budget conversations entirely. This matters because cost reduction has a ceiling (you can only cut so much), while revenue generation creates expanding budget headroom. Map your product capabilities to both from day one.//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Welcome to this gentle spa facial designed to calm the mind and soften the day. ♥ In this softly whispered ASMR treatment, I cleanse the skin, apply a delicate peel-off mask with pressed blossoms, and finish with soothing skincare and light massage. Slow movements, pleasant light music in the background and peaceful spa sounds to help you relax, unwind, and drift into rest. Thank you for being here! :) ♥ Amazon Storefront https://www.amazon.com/shop/gentlewhisperingSpotify Video https://open.spotify.com/show/0kToYjBezGVp3B15I0vzA8Amazon Mp3 https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=ntt_srch_drd_B01BAXDICM?ie=UTF8&field-keywords=GentleWhispering&index=digital-music&search-type=ss YouTube Mp3 https://music.youtube.com/channel/UCAYaoy-i0_bTnd9yzzDMkhw Spotify Mp3 https://play.spotify.com/artist/3gkB9Cdx4UuWQxjhelyd87?play=true&utm_source=open.spotify.com&utm_medium=open iTunes Mp3 https://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/gentlewhispering/id1077570705#see-all/top-songshttps://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/maria-gentlewhispering/id1048320316PayPal (Donations, if you feel you need to give back) https://www.paypal.me/GentleWhisperingEmail: MariaGentlewhispering@gmail.com#ASMR #GentleWhispering #SPA

Chapter OneThere are years that feel ordinary while you are living them. Whispered years. Years that you don't remember once they are over. Maybe, if something did happen in one of those years, you only understand later that something shifted.The Year of the Fire Horse is not a whispering year.In the Chinese zodiac cycle, the Horse is movement, vitality, forward momentum, raw life force. Add Fire to that, and the energy does not stroll. It gallops. It blazes. It exposes. It refuses stagnation. The Fire Horse does not tolerate fences built from fear, complacency, or stagnation. It does not tolerate fences built from anything, actually.Historically, Fire Horse years have been associated with intensity and social change. They stir people from complacency. They amplify what already exists. They accelerate timelines. They reveal where something is alive and where it has decayed.In 1966, the world did not whisper.The Cultural Revolution erupted in China, unleashing ideological purges and youth-driven extremism. At the same time, The Beatles released Revolver, pushing music, consciousness, and culture into unfamiliar territory. Psychedelic experimentation entered mainstream awareness. The Vietnam War escalated. Protest movements strengthened. The space race accelerated. The collective drive to enlightenment and awakening was hijacked into a hyper-individual identity. The “I AM” path became louder than the shared field of true enlightenment.1966 was not a quiet year. And it was Light/Dark.The same intensity that fueled creative breakthroughs also fueled destruction. The same fire that broke artistic barriers also burned institutions to the ground. The energy itself was neutral. The direction it took depended on who held it. And as the holders of power were light/dark, so were the results at a global social scale, dipped in light and dark. The energy from 1966 fueled the light/dark paradigm for decades.The light/dark paradigm drivers know about the Year of the Fire Horse. They know the energy it encompasses, and they know how to use it.Here is the clincher for 2026, however: The light rules.The words “light rules” are not said in a sentimental way. Not in a triumphalist way. But structurally. The field has shifted from light/dark to light-only. What worked in 1966 to derail collective awakening will not function the same way now. At least, it will not function in the same way for those who have chosen LIGHT. For those who choose to stay in light/dark, sure, it functions the same way for them. And it will be fast and furious as it materializes their choice.The Fire Horse runs fast this year.Darkness or hyper-individualism expressed as a personal path of enlightenment will no longer be an option for the rest of us, however.For us, the LIGHT, the Fire Horse opens its eyes, shakes the chains and dusts them off, rears, finds a focus, and runs fast and furious, not caring what falls in its path. And what falls in its path this year is darkness. Inner darkness, outer darkness, all darkness. It will burn. Burn. Burn.The discussion doesn't stop here - listen to the full podcast episode for unfiltered insights from Inelia and our panelists. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.drivingtotherez.com/subscribe

Hail has officially surpassed hurricanes and wildfires as the costliest natural disaster in the U.S. over the last 25 years—a shift that became visible three years ago and created a massive market opportunity. Wesley Pergament recognized this trend early and built Sola Insurance around it, transforming how homeowners protect their properties by eliminating the subjective claims process that's plagued the industry. After closing their Series A, Sola has cracked the code on hail insurance: using parametric weather data triggers to reduce claim resolution from months to days, cutting fraud that was driving $15,000-$20,000 deductibles, and building a 100% referral-driven distribution engine through independent insurance agencies. In this episode of BUILDERS, Wesley reveals how they pivoted from tornado to hail coverage in month two, why they've run zero outbound for 18 months while scaling exponentially, and how they're rebuilding policy forms and modeling from scratch to become the go-to natural disaster insurance provider.Topics Discussed: The data signals that showed hail crossing over as the #1 costliest natural disaster Rebuilding insurance policy forms and modeling around objective weather data vs. indemnity claims How wind and hail deductibles exploded from $1,000 to $15,000-$20,000, effectively excluding roof coverage Why independent agencies are multi-generational businesses where reputation is everything The mechanics of building a pure referral engine that eliminated all outbound for 18 months Creating complementary coverage that's becoming fundamental infrastructure in home insurance packages Using hail diameter, storm duration, and damage indicators to create parametric triggers The strategic sequencing of sales-first, then product, now marketing investments post-Series A Why addressing the fraud problem first unlocked both pricing and claims experience advantagesGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Invest disproportionately in first-call onboarding when entering regulated channelsUse regional conference immersion for channel insight, not lead generationDesign systematic referral prompts at trust milestonesSequence GTM investment around validated constraint-breaking, not best practicesRebuild the broken process structurally, don't optimize it incrementally// Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Astronaut time costs $130,000 per hour, yet a significant portion goes to routine maintenance and cargo logistics rather than breakthrough science. Icarus Robotics is building the robotic workforce for commercial space stations, and despite being just over a year old, secured a deployment partnership with NASA and Voyager Space for the International Space Station in 2027. In this episode, we sat down with Ethan Barajas, CEO and Co-Founder of Icarus Robotics, to understand how they positioned teleoperated robotics as the wedge into a horizontal expansion strategy spanning satellite constellation servicing, space infrastructure maintenance, and eventually cislunar operations.Topics Discussed:Why the shift from NASA-funded ISS to commercial stations fundamentally changes the economics of space laborHow optical communications via Starlink reduced latency from 800ms (S-band radio relay through GEO) to 100ms, enabling Earth-based teleoperationThe teleoperation-to-autonomy data flywheel: collecting in-distribution physics data to train high-level movement primitivesFlight Heritage constraints at NASA and why mainline robotics run on chips that stopped production in the early 2000sCollaborating with commercial station developers during design phase to embed robotic-friendly architecture (hatch tabs, fiducials for localization)Horizontal expansion thesis: ISS labor as the corpus for intelligent robotics across multi-thousand satellite constellations and space infrastructureThe biological research unlock: how Keytruda's $25B revenue between 2023-2024 resulted from ISS protein crystallization researchGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Time market entry to structural cost shiftsStack infrastructure betsBuild the data moat earlyInfluence infrastructure design earlyFrame automation as economic inevitabilityUse distribution to attract technical talentPlan horizontal expansion early// Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Vycarb is commercializing a carbon storage technology that mimics ocean chemistry, converting CO2 into bicarbonate—a stable molecule that remains sequestered for hundreds of thousands of years. Based in Brooklyn, the company operates at the intersection of hard science and market-making in carbon removal, where customers, verification standards, and pricing mechanisms are all emerging simultaneously. Garrett Boudinot shares how Vycarb navigated this complexity: closing their first deals with progressive offset aggregators, pivoting from voluntary ESG buyers to compliance-driven ICPs as market dynamics shifted in 2022-2023, and building international pipeline in Asia Pacific and Europe that became essential when US climate policy reversed in 2025.Topics Discussed:Early customer strategy with Frontier Fund and Milkywire as market-making offset aggregators The 2022-2023 market shift from voluntary ESG purchasing to compliance-driven urgency ICP evolution: identifying customers facing carbon taxes versus sustainability commitments International expansion into Singapore and Asia Pacific compliance markets pre-2025 Raising a US climate tech seed round in 2025 during sector-wide funding contraction Scaling pilots iteratively while building verification methodologies for a nascent category Marketing strategy: facility tours, industry-specific PR in cement and aluminum, strategic investor logos Transition from performance metric validation to site-specific commercial design Leveraging strategic investors (Idemitsu, Rio Tinto, Mitsui, Shell) for channel partnerships Building distributed deployment capability from centralized Brooklyn pilot operationsGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Find customers where your solution impacts P&L, not just valuesProgressive customers build category infrastructure, not just revenueGeographic diversification is risk mitigation, not just expansionCentralized demonstration beats distributed ops at early stageProof of execution replaces messaging in nascent categoriesConvert strategic investors into channel partnersBuild verification infrastructure as you scale, not after//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I HireSenior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role.Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Justin Fineberg built a 500,000+ follower audience on TikTok and Instagram before launching Cassidy, an AI automation platform for non-technical users. By consistently creating content about AI and technology, he turned inbound interest into his initial customer base and market validation. In this episode of BUILDERS, Justin breaks down how he leveraged short-form video to identify product opportunities, the mechanics of maintaining authentic audience relationships while monetizing, and how to transition from social-led distribution to scalable B2B SaaS go-to-market.Topics Discussed:Leveraging ChatGPT's launch as an inflection point to ride mainstream AI interestConverting consultant requests into product insights and early customer signalsThe platform mechanics of TikTok vs Instagram for B2B contentTransitioning from 100% social-sourced revenue to multi-channel B2B salesBuilding repeatable content systems that survive founder time constraintsTesting product messaging and features through content before formal launchGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Timing content focus with market inflection points compounds growthInbound consulting requests are product requirement documents in disguiseContent systems must be friction-free or they'll die under operational loadGood content transcends platform-specific algorithm hackingSocial distribution creates unfair launch advantages, not permanent moats//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I HireSenior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

OneCrew is building end-to-end operational software for asphalt and concrete contractors—a segment caught between Procore's general contractor focus and ServiceTitan's field services model. After leaving Bain & Company and Google, Ari Bleemer and his co-founder Max identified that self-performing specialty contractors who handle everything from estimating to payment collection had no purpose-built platform. In this episode, Ari shares how they've spent four and a half years building trust in an industry skeptical of software promises, why they resisted the urge to expand horizontally across multiple construction trades, and what they learned about sustainable vertical SaaS growth.Topics Discussed:How the middle segment of construction—self-performing contractors who run the full project lifecycle—remains structurally underservedBuilding trust in a market burned by consultants promising custom software for $10,000 that never worksWhy every employee at OneCrew, regardless of function, goes through industry-specific onboarding to learn paving terminology and contractor workflowsThe strategic decision to delay expansion into adjacent verticals despite having configurable product architectureHow sustained market presence compounds credibility faster than any go-to-market tacticGTM Lessons For B2B Founders:Map the white space between dominant platforms: OneCrew identified that Procore owns general contractors coordinating multiple trades, while ServiceTitan and others own single-visit field services. The gap: specialty contractors executing complete projects—estimating, proposing, executing, and collecting payment. Ari describes it as "the entire middle of the industry where you have a lot of self perform contractors, specialty contractors, trade contractors, subcontractors...that are actually running a process from start to end." Map your market by understanding what established platforms actually serve versus claim to serve, then target the operational workflows that fall through the cracks.Use "niche" skepticism as market validation: When VCs, friends, and family question if your market is too narrow, you've likely found defensible positioning. Ari's test: "Have you been on a sidewalk today? Have you driven on a road today? Have you been in a parking lot today?" The paving industry powers daily infrastructure but gets zero attention from horizontal software players or large AI companies. Founders should seek markets where usage is ubiquitous but mindshare and software investment are minimal—that's where you build sustainable moats.Make product fluency a company-wide competency: OneCrew requires every hire—engineers, sales, operations—to learn paving industry terminology, contractor pain points, and workflow nuances during onboarding. This isn't just sales training; it's embedding industry context into product decisions, customer conversations, and roadmap prioritization. The payoff: "Contractors come up to us and say like, it feels like you guys actually get it, which there's no better compliment for us." In vertical SaaS, domain expertise distributed across the entire company drives faster iteration cycles and deeper customer trust than any single "industry expert" hire.//Sponsors:Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Try my other podcast, Calm History Access all 430+ episodes of Sleep Whispers (including lots of Story Time, Trivia Time, & Whisperpedia episodes) by becoming a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!). Become a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!) and enjoy over 600 total episodes from these podcasts: Sleep Whispers (430+ episodes) Calm … Continue reading Whisperpedia | The Historical Failure of “New Coke” in 1985 (A162) | Whispered Bedtime Sleep Stories

Clockwise is pioneering intelligent time management for knowledge workers, addressing the fundamental constraint that limits all knowledge work organizations: how teams allocate their most finite resource. Founded in 2016, the company has spent a decade solving the problem of calendar inefficiency and meeting overload that fragments productive time. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, we sat down with Matt Martin, Co-Founder & CEO of Clockwise, to learn about the company's journey from a three-year build cycle to serving major software organizations through a product-led growth motion, the strategic decisions behind targeting software engineers as their wedge market, and why the time management problem remains largely unsolved despite being obvious to anyone who's worked in a large organization.Topics DiscussedWhy time remains the primary economic constraint in knowledge work despite a decade of tooling evolutionThe three-year pre-launch build period and deliberate four-year path to monetizationTargeting software engineers as the wedge: ROI clarity in heads-down time versus meeting-heavy rolesThe graveyard of calendar productivity startups: UI-focused plays, consumer pivots, and buyer/user misalignmentTransitioning from pure PLG to blended motion with enterprise inbound and pilot programsThe stubborn reality of organic growth: why referrals dominate despite extensive channel experimentationBuilding toward AI-powered personalized time agents that embrace individual complexity//Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Voxel applies computer vision AI to industrial workplace safety, tackling a $100-180 billion annual problem in the US alone. Vernon O'Donnell joined as CEO two years ago facing a company with strong Carnegie Mellon-trained technical talent but a fundamentally broken go-to-market motion. The founding team had pursued an insurance carrier-led channel strategy that seemed logical but created systematic distrust with end customers. Vernon's transformation—shifting to direct enterprise sales, moving upmarket, and obsessing over 14-20 day implementation cycles—drove 50% of customers to expand. In this conversation, Vernon shares the specific pivots he made, why he believes technical differentiation has flattened dramatically in the AI era, and his hard-earned philosophy that founders who cite Henry Ford's "faster horse" quote simply aren't listening carefully enough.The $100-180 billion industrial safety problem and why labor shortages amplify injury impact Marrying deep technical AI talent with certified safety professionals who've operated in industrial environments The fatal flaw in insurance-led channel strategies: starting from a position of customer distrust Vernon's three-part transformation: talent changes, direct enterprise motion, upmarket focus Collapsing time-to-value from concept to live results in 14-20 days Why "proliferation of use cases" loses to "excellence in core delivery" The death of technical moats in an era of accessible VLMs and AI coding tools Distribution as delivery: preparing for thousands of locations before winning the Fortune 50 account Expanding from safety intelligence to broader industrial intelligence and robotics optimizationMove fast on talent misalignment—severance generosity buys speed: When Vernon transformed Voxel's GTM, he made rapid talent changes while paying fair severance packages without negotiation. His logic: "Why quibble over the margins when you have a bigger problem to solve from a transformation perspective." Enterprise sellers require different skills than partner/channel sellers. Once you know the motion needs to change, talent misalignment won't self-correct. Pay people with dignity and move immediately—the speed gain far exceeds severance costs.Insurance-led channels fail when customers fear data sharing: Voxel's initial insurance carrier/broker strategy targeted high-claim customers—logical since they have measurable pain. The execution flaw: companies refuse to share operational data with insurance providers, and the relationship starts from inherent distrust. Vernon kept carriers as validation partners (proving ROI) but built direct sales motion instead. For founders: channel strategies only work when the partner genuinely accelerates trust and access, not when they create structural friction with end buyers.//Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.ioThe Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co//Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyMTopics Discussed:GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:

hema.to is building AI-powered diagnostic infrastructure for cytometry—a specialized area of laboratory medicine analyzing immune system data to detect blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma. Unlike radiology or pathology where AI solutions are abundant, cytometry has remained largely untouched by the AI wave, creating both opportunity and isolation for the Munich-based company. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, we sat down with Karsten Miermans, CEO at hema.to GmbH, to discuss why they're deliberately keeping sales founder-led despite having paying customers, how South America became an unexpected beachhead market, and what it actually means to build infrastructure versus point solutions in healthcare. Topics Discussed:  From consulting project to venture-backed company: recognizing scalability in hindsight  The workflow integration problem killing healthcare AI implementations  Infrastructure versus technology: why healthcare AI isn't just about the algorithm  Learning ideal customer profile after 18 months of being "all over the place"  Why South America's governance structure enables faster adoption than the US  Resisting the urge to hire sales before achieving true repeatability  The 10-year vision: shifting from "watch and wait" to "predict and prevent" in immune disease GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Pattern matching fails when you're an outsider—budget 18+ months to find your beachhead: Karsten assumed every application of their diagnostic method was the same and spent a year and a half "blue eyed" (naively optimistic) before identifying their true ICP. The outsider advantage lets you reimagine workflows insiders can't, but you'll incorrectly assume transferability across use cases. Don't expect repeatability in year one when entering regulated, workflow-dependent markets. Infrastructure requires multi-stakeholder orchestration—resource for enterprise complexity from day one: Karsten distinguishes technology (point solutions, single users) from infrastructure (shared resources requiring data exchange and workflow integration). In healthcare, this means integration into hospital systems, databases, and electronic health records across multiple stakeholders. "Every sale becomes enterprise sales" even for individual labs because of this infrastructure requirement. Founders building horizontal platforms should model sales cycles and resource requirements as enterprise from the start, regardless of deal size. Your ICP is cognitively overloaded—they won't understand your category innovation: Doctors are "under so much pressure that they just don't have any cognitive capacity left" to philosophically evaluate why AI might be difficult to implement or how infrastructure differs from technology. They need problems solved within their existing mental models. Skip the category education. Frame everything as workflow enhancement, not innovation. Let sophistication emerge through implementation, not pitch decks. Revenue doesn't equal repeatability—know when you're still in discovery mode: Despite having paying customers, Karsten explicitly states "we're not at product-market fit yet" because they're "discovering and learning things with every new laboratory hospital" around data privacy, integration, and AI deployment. The PMF signal isn't customer count or revenue—it's when the process becomes predictable, customers refer others, and you stop discovering new requirements. Hiring sales before this point scales complexity, not revenue. Regulatory friction determines market sequencing, not just market size: US governance complexity turns every deal into heavy enterprise sales with "many stakeholders," while South America proved "much more willing to move with fewer processes," making them "just much faster to adopt innovative technology." This wasn't strategy—Karsten's CTO speaks Spanish through a personal connection. But the lesson transfers: for infrastructure plays in regulated markets, test adoption velocity in lower-governance environments first to build proof points, even if TAM looks smaller on paper. In healthcare, marketing is clinical evidence—customer success creates your GTM flywheel: Karsten spends minimal time on marketing because beyond the first 5-10 users, doctors "want to see clinical evidence, they want to see papers, they want to see maybe that a friend of theirs is using it." Marketing in healthcare isn't content or demand gen—it's peer validation and published proof. Founders should structure early customer engagements to generate this evidence, not just revenue. The "marketing sales flywheel really does kick in much more once you have product market fit" because PMF enables the evidence generation required for credibility. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Dextall is attacking a structural inefficiency in construction: the 3-year design coordination cycle that precedes every mid-rise building, combined with the chaotic on-site execution that follows. Founded by Aurimas Sabulis after years running a commercial window company and witnessing construction site dysfunction firsthand, Dextall is building what Aurimas calls a "prefab operating system"—software that connects architectural design directly to factory production of building exteriors. In a market where less than 1% of U.S. mid-rise projects use prefab (versus 75% in Scandinavia), Dextall is bridging the 3-4 year gap between design inception and approved drawings while manufacturing building components that arrive on-site as "Lego blocks." In this episode, Aurimas shares the hard lessons learned from building in construction's unforgiving risk environment. Topics Discussed: Targeting the 6-40 story sweet spot: steel, concrete, and mass timber construction where prefab delivers maximum value (below 6 stories is wood frame; above 40 enters different glass-box typology) The reality of U.S. prefab penetration: 99% of projects in Dextall's pipeline would go traditional route without them Why the physical product stayed constant from day one while software took multiple failed iterations The expensive lesson: building software that goes from design to fabrication in one day, only to learn architects rejected it because it removed their design control Evolving from 2D drawings to 3D renderings to animations to physical two-story mock-ups—and why customers only "got it" after seeing real completed buildings Launching a separate SaaS division for architects that independently generates value while creating 90% backend efficiency when connected to Dextall's manufacturing The three-to-five-year vision: prompt-engineered buildings with real-time cost, carbon footprint, and feasibility feedback GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Domain credibility is your entry ticket in risk-averse industries: Aurimas's first customers came because he had "street credibility"—a track record of delivering complex, large-scale window projects. In construction, healthcare, and other industries where failure has severe consequences, founders without domain experience face insurmountable trust barriers. If you're building in these markets without industry background, your co-founder or first hires must bring that credibility, or you'll burn years trying to earn it. Proof velocity matters more than proof perfection: Dextall moved from 9-story buildings to 40-story projects by stacking proof points, not by waiting to debut with a showcase project. Each successful delivery de-risked the next larger bet. Founders should optimize for proof velocity—getting the smallest viable validation that enables the next larger commitment—rather than trying to land the trophy customer that "proves everything." Physical businesses require physical proof—budget accordingly: Dextall built multiple two-story physical mock-ups and actual buildings before customers truly understood their value proposition, despite having sophisticated 3D animations. Aurimas noted customers kept claiming they understood, then asking the same questions until they could physically see and touch completed work. If you're building in construction, manufacturing, or industrial sectors, your CAC will include physical demonstration costs that software founders never face. Budget 3-5x what you think you'll need for mock-ups and proofs of concept. Workflow disruption fails when you remove user agency: Dextall's software could compress 3-4 years of design coordination into one day—a 1000x improvement. Architects rejected it because it was "too heavy" and removed their control over design. The team had to rebuild to let architects control design while Dextall's system handled the backend connection to manufacturing. When your "better way" requires users to surrender control or change how they think about their craft, you're not selling efficiency—you're selling identity change, which rarely works. Find the integration layer that adds value without displacing existing agency. In mature industries, selectively challenge the status quo: Aurimas explicitly asks "is this fight worth fighting?" when Dextall encounters resistance to their approach. They focus on 3-4 nuances at a time rather than attempting to fix all 100 industry problems. When pushback happens, they evaluate whether to press the issue or "build deeper trench within the customer base" first, then return to that battle later. Founders tackling established industries should map their battles, not just their product roadmap—identify which conventions are essential to challenge for your value prop, and which can wait until you have more market power. Bridge disconnected systems rather than optimizing endpoints: The construction industry has sophisticated design tools (AI-powered generative design) and manufacturers (though often Excel-based). Dextall's differentiation is connecting these two worlds—architects can design freely, and their designs automatically translate to manufacturing specifications with real-time costing and feasibility. Many mature industries have this pattern: advanced front-end tools, capable back-end production, but manual/broken handoffs between them. The integration layer often provides more defensible value than improving either endpoint. Layer software distribution onto enterprise sales once you have proof: Dextall spent years doing "old school" enterprise sales—cold calling developers, lunch-and-learns with architects, bringing customers to job sites. Only after building credibility and understanding architect workflows are they launching SaaS for architectural firms. The software creates independent value for architects while generating 90% backend efficiency for Dextall when connected. Founders in hybrid businesses should resist the temptation to lead with software distribution before proving the full value chain works—but actively build toward that transition. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Empathy is pioneering bereavement care as an enterprise benefit, transforming how employers and financial institutions support employees during life's most challenging transitions. Working with 9 of the top 10 life insurance carriers in the US and Canada—covering over 40 million people—Empathy created a new category by combining grief support with practical logistics like probate navigation, account deactivation, and estate settlement. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, we sat down with Ron Gura, Co-Founder & CEO of Empathy, to learn how the company went from testing five verticals simultaneously to dominating life insurance, then leveraged the group life/employer overlap to expand into employee benefits. Topics Discussed: Testing five enterprise verticals simultaneously to find product-market fit Landing New York Life through their venture arm and innovation team Why life insurance carriers need to be risk-averse (and how to work with that reality) The strategic overlap between group life insurance and employee benefits Investing in brand at seed stage when your barrier to entry is psychological aversion Navigating dual audiences: decision-makers in their workday versus end users in crisis Expanding from loss to adjacent life transitions like disability leave and estate planning GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Run parallel vertical tests with focus constraints, not sequential exploration: Ron identified 10+ potential verticals but intentionally tested exactly five simultaneously—hospices, funeral homes, employers, and two others before life insurance emerged as the winner at position five. This parallel testing with artificial constraints forces prioritization while dramatically compressing time-to-insight. Sequential testing would have meant potentially cycling through five failed pilots before discovering their strongest market. B2B founders with horizontal platforms should pick their top 3-5 verticals and run focused pilots in parallel, accepting that this burns more resources upfront but eliminates the risk of quitting before finding your wedge. Map the ecosystem overlap between buyer personas before choosing your wedge: Empathy's expansion from life insurance to employers wasn't growth strategy—it was recognizing an architectural reality. Half their carriers sell group life, meaning MetLife doesn't sell to consumers at metlife.com but exclusively to employer groups. When Amanda at Paramount loses her sister (not covered by insurance), she calls Paramount HR. When her husband dies (covered by MetLife group policy), the beneficiary calls MetLife. Same end user, two different enterprise entry points into the same moment. B2B founders should map these triangular relationships before choosing their wedge vertical. The question isn't just "who has budget?" but "who else touches this user in adjacent contexts?" Brand investment at seed stage is product strategy when fighting cognitive aversion: Ron's insight: "The barrier to entry isn't regulatory and isn't technology. It's us humans trying really hard not to think about our own mortality." This isn't a marketing problem—it's a fundamental go-to-market blocker. The company made what most would consider Series A investments (premium domain, design system, tone/voice framework) at seed stage specifically because brand reduces psychological friction to adoption. Contrast this with Monday.com starting as "daPulse" and rebranding years into success. B2B founders addressing taboo topics (death, mental health, financial distress, relationship issues) should model brand as a core distribution lever, not post-PMF polish. In deeply human categories, buyer's lived experience is your demo: Enterprise buyers at Citibank, MetLife, or Google aren't experiencing crisis during the sales cycle—they're evaluating ROI in their normal workday. But as Ron noted, "Everyone we're talking to...they're humans. They have parents, they had loss, they went through probate." The most common response after seeing the product: "Damn, I wish you called me a few months ago. I needed this a year ago with my mom." This turns product demo into personal recognition. B2B founders in universal human experience categories (caregiving, bereavement, parental leave, financial stress) should structure discovery and demo to activate buyer's memory of their own experience, not just their budget authority. Category creation is a resource-attraction strategy that trades speed for competitive exposure: Ron explicitly acknowledged: "There's pros and cons to defining a category. It's helpful when you attract resources, talent, capital. It also creates very fertile ground for a number two sympathy.com to come along and learn from this podcast...what to go after." Category leadership accelerates recruiting and fundraising by providing narrative clarity, but it simultaneously publishes your playbook. Every hiring blog post, podcast appearance, and positioning document teaches future competitors which verticals to target and which to avoid. B2B founders should treat category creation as a conscious bet: trade competitive opacity for talent/capital velocity. If you're not ready to defend your position, stay in stealth longer. Bridge new categories to existing budget lines through analogous benefits: When entering new verticals beyond life insurance, Ron doesn't educate from zero. With employers, he positions bereavement care alongside caregiving solutions, fertility programs, and parental leave: "This is a life transition happening in my own intimate house. Just like a new baby. I have new duties now." This isn't metaphor—it's budget mapping. Bereavement care gets evaluated against existing family benefits spending, not created from scratch. B2B founders in new categories should identify which existing line item their solution logically extends, then structure ROI narratives around reallocation, not net-new budget creation. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

The cross-border payments market remains stubbornly difficult despite billions in venture capital and countless smart founders attacking the problem. The core challenge isn't technology—it's economics. Western Union's margins weren't exploitative greed; they reflected the brutal reality of cash distribution networks, compliance infrastructure, and dual-country regulatory overhead. Palla Financial cracked this by inverting the entire model: instead of fighting for expensive US-based senders, they partnered with Latin American banks to let recipients pull funds. This approach taps into the world's largest remittance corridor ($160+ billion annually flowing from the US to Latin America) while sidestepping the customer acquisition bloodbath. In this episode, Enrique Perezalonso, CEO of Palla Financial, breaks down why recipient-driven payments eliminate distribution costs, how they rebuilt their product three times based on bank feedback, and why the "no CAC" embedded model still requires massive partner investment to actually work. Topics Discussed: Why cross-border payments remain broken: dual-country regulations, cash distribution economics, and two-sided transaction complexity The shift from cash-based infrastructure to digital rails and its impact on unit economics Palla's pull-based model: embedding payment requests inside bank apps to flip sender/recipient dynamics Revenue mechanics: $3 consumer fees, FX markup economics, and interchange/revenue sharing with bank partners The buy-vs-build calculus for banks and why a Central American banking group returned after a four-year internal build attempt Creating a new category and watching competitors attempt to copy the embedded approach Selling into banks with no standardized buyer: navigating from remittance teams to CEOs depending on organizational maturity The reality of "indirect" CAC: why embedded distribution still requires heavy investment in partner success Implementation failures and the shift from hands-off best practices to consultative partner enablement GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Flip expensive distribution by attacking the other side of the transaction: While competitors burned cash acquiring US-based senders in saturated corridors (US-Mexico, US-India), Palla partnered with recipient-side banks in Latin America. Banks gained deposits, interchange revenue, and digital channel differentiation without building infrastructure. The lesson isn't just "find cheaper distribution"—it's recognizing that two-sided markets have two potential wedges, and the less obvious side may offer superior economics and strategic positioning. Target buyers who already tried and failed to build: A Central American banking group spent nine months evaluating Palla, decided to build internally, then returned four years later. This wasn't poor execution—it was competing priorities, lack of scale economics, and the reality that cross-border payments isn't their core business. The strongest signal for partnership readiness isn't interest, it's previous build attempts that stalled. These buyers understand the problem deeply and won't need convincing on value. "Embedded" and "no CAC" are myths without massive partner investment: Palla initially provided best practice guides and light coaching, assuming banks would naturally drive adoption. They saw "lackluster results" until they became "more and more hands-on," shifting to consultative implementation with proper incentive design and accountability frameworks. The volume business requires scale, and scale requires active partner management. Budget for partner success resources as if you're hiring an implementation consulting team, not just doing integrations. Use speed to rebuild the product in real-time with customers: The product Palla launched bears little resemblance to their original vision. They rebuilt features "hand in hand" with bank partners, leveraging their advantage over large competitors: no bureaucracy, hunger to make it work, and speed. This isn't about "customer feedback"—it's about treating early partners as co-developers and having the discipline to throw away your original roadmap when partners show you what actually solves their problem. Extreme focus means saying no to everything adjacent: Palla deliberately limits themselves to "two or three products" all within cross-border payments, explicitly avoiding cross-sell opportunities and adjacent revenue streams. Enrique notes this is both their moat and "a potential pitfall" when opportunities multiply with success. The discipline isn't about focus when you're struggling—it's about maintaining focus when growth creates endless plausible expansions. Each "yes" to something new is a "no" to deepening your core advantage. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Ridepanda turned the failed unit economics of shared micro-mobility into a viable B2B model by eliminating operational costs that drove Lime's per-minute pricing from $0.15 to $0.55. After working at Lime and seeing firsthand why rebalancing, charging, vandalism, and theft made profitability impossible, Co-founder Chinmay Malaviya built a subscription model where employers subsidize personal e-bikes and scooters for employees. The insight: commuting is planned travel with validated enterprise budgets already allocated to parking, shuttles, and transit. Ridepanda now works with Amazon, Google, and County of San Mateo, achieving 5-15% employee adoption—triple San Francisco's 2-4% bike commute rate—with 85% being net-new riders who've never regularly used bikes or scooters before. Topics Discussed: Why shared micro-mobility's cost structure (rebalancing, charging, vandalism) made $0.55/minute pricing inevitable Targeting enterprise transportation teams versus mid-market HR benefits buyers as distinct ICPs Subscription economics: $50-$250/month with employer subsidies only triggering on employee sign-ups Converting non-riders to daily commuters: 85% adoption from people who previously didn't bike/scooter Enterprise-first strategy: going where dedicated teams and budgets already exist for employee transportation Vertical expansion into manufacturing, law firms, hospitals, and universities GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Target existing budget holders, not net-new spending: Enterprises already fund parking facilities, shuttle services, van pools, and commuter benefits through dedicated transportation and facilities teams. Ridepanda didn't create a new expense category—they repositioned within existing line items. This meant selling to buyers with validated pain, allocated budget, and quarterly goals tied to employee transportation. When entering established markets, map where your solution fits in current spending patterns rather than forcing buyers to carve out new budget. Structure pricing to eliminate perceived risk: The subsidy only applies when an employee signs up—there's no upfront commitment or wasted spend on unused capacity. This removed the enterprise objection of "why am I paying when I'm not getting anything." For a new category where adoption rates are unproven, usage-based pricing aligned incentives and made pilots trivial to approve. When selling unproven solutions, architect your commercial model so the buyer's risk scales linearly with actual utilization. Segment ICP by buyer motivation, not just company size: Enterprise buyers (transportation/facilities teams) optimize for modal shift, carbon reduction, and getting employees out of single-occupancy vehicles. Mid-market buyers (HR/benefits managers) optimize for return-to-office adoption, wellness metrics, and benefits competitiveness. Same product, completely different value props and sales conversations. Don't assume company size determines buyer psychology—map the org chart to understand who owns the problem and what they're measured on. Attack broken unit economics, not just user experience: Lime's pricing increase from $0.15 to $0.55 per minute wasn't greed—it was fundamental business model failure. Shared services require rebalancing fleets, charging distributed assets, and absorbing vandalism/theft losses. Personal ownership via subscription eliminated every operational cost that made shared mobility unprofitable. When incumbents are struggling financially despite strong demand, the opportunity isn't better execution—it's a structural model shift. Prove behavior change at enterprise scale, not just product-market fit: Achieving 5-15% employee adoption when the city baseline is 2-4% demonstrates that subsidized access plus personal ownership drives 3x penetration. More critically, 42% daily usage from an 85% net-new rider base proves the model creates new commuting behavior rather than capturing existing cyclists. Enterprise buyers focused on emissions and modal shift care about conversion metrics, not vanity usage numbers. Define the transformation metric that proves you're changing behavior systemically, not incrementally. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Positron AI is a 2+ year old silicon company targeting decode-heavy AI inference workloads where memory bandwidth, not compute, is the bottleneck. Launching end of 2025/early 2026, their architecture delivers 2TB of on-chip memory capacity versus Nvidia Rubin's 0.4TB—enabling 3-5x better performance per dollar and per watt for reasoning models, code generation, and video generation. In this episode, Mitesh Agrawal shares how Positron identified the memory bandwidth gap in a market where Nvidia controls 90%+ share, why they're prioritizing anchor customer commitments over product completion, and the hard lessons from Lambda Labs about rapid iteration and customer-driven optionality. Topics Discussed: Positron's technical approach: focusing on memory bandwidth and capacity over compute for inference workloads Why decode-heavy applications (reasoning models, video generation, code generation) are becoming memory-bound The challenge of selling silicon to hyperscalers when Nvidia controls 90%+ of the market Building optionality into product strategy: air cooling vs. liquid cooling as unexpected GTM advantage Learning to sell hardware before the product ships and why anchor customers matter Lambda Labs experience: lessons on rapid iteration and thoughtful hiring during hypergrowth Maintaining engineering-centricity: 47 of 50 employees focused on product development GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Find technical bottlenecks in high-growth markets: Positron identified that memory bandwidth wasn't scaling as fast as compute, creating a bottleneck for inference workloads. While Nvidia dominates with 90%+ market share, they optimize for training revenue. B2B founders should analyze where dominant players are constrained by their own economics or existing roadmaps, then build specifically for those underserved segments. Markets default to oligopoly, not monopoly: Mitesh observed that customers actively seek alternatives even when one vendor is superior. "Markets want oligopoly structure to exist," he explained. B2B founders shouldn't be discouraged by dominant incumbents—customers want optionality for leverage, supply chain resilience, and risk management. Position yourself as the credible alternative in specific use cases. Discover optionality through customer conversations: Positron initially pitched performance per watt without realizing air cooling capability was a major advantage. Only after selling their first product did they learn customers valued deploying in existing data centers without infrastructure overhauls. B2B founders should systematically debrief early customers to uncover which features solve problems you didn't anticipate. Sell before shipping in hardware: The biggest priority between now and product launch is securing anchor customers willing to commit purchase orders. "If you have someone to build for, the fillip it gives the engineering team, the confidence it gives operations and supply chain vendors—we underwrite that," Mitesh emphasized. Pre-sales derisk production, prove demand, and create momentum. B2B hardware founders should treat early customer commitments as product validation, not just revenue. Build storytelling into technical sales: Convincing customers to buy unshipped hardware requires months of narrative work. "It becomes like, if I sell it to you, why will it be useful to you? Is it going to save cost? Attract new customers? Drive growth?" Success means co-creating the internal business case your champion will present. B2B founders should invest heavily in helping customers articulate ROI and strategic value before asking for commitments. Maintain rapid iteration cadence: Nvidia ships every 12-15 months versus the industry standard of 3-4 years. "If you tell me that in 10 years you've launched 10-12 products in silicon, I will give much more probability we will be successful," Mitesh stated. B2B founders should structure operations and product development for continuous iteration rather than big-bang releases, even in traditionally slow-moving industries. Delay non-engineering hires until product proves itself: With 47 of 50 people in engineering, Positron has consciously prioritized product over go-to-market. "It was a very conscious decision," Mitesh emphasized. For deep-tech companies, this focus ensures you can actually deliver before scaling sales. B2B founders should resist pressure to build balanced teams early—let roles emerge from real needs rather than theoretical org charts.     Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

theion is developing lithium-sulfur battery technology targeting 500 watt hours per kilogram in their first commercial product—nearly double today's lithium-ion cells at 270-300 Wh/kg—with an ultimate roadmap to 1,000 Wh/kg. By replacing nickel-manganese-cobalt cathodes with crystalline sulfur and graphite anodes with lithium metal, theion aims to deliver three times the energy density at one-third the cost and CO2 footprint of current batteries. In this episode of BUILDERS, we sat down with Dr. Ulrich Ehmes, CEO of theion, to discuss how a production-focused CEO is navigating the journey from TRL 3-4 to pilot line, why they're targeting electric aviation first, and how a 12-year battery industry veteran evaluates what actually constitutes a materials breakthrough. Topics Discussed: Why sulfur cathodes and lithium metal anodes enable the performance jump beyond lithium-ion The critical importance of monoclinic gamma crystalline structure for cycle life  Navigating the transition from coin cells to pouch cells to industrialization  Strategic decision-making on initial market entry for deep tech hardware  Why process innovation in mixing and coating is required to unlock sulfur's full potential  Building a China-independent supply chain using oil refining waste  The 3-year development reality driven by cycling test requirements GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Price your technology against value creation, not cost savings alone: Ulrich's market strategy centers on "markets which will pay a lot of money for super lightweight batteries"—specifically aviation applications where weight reduction directly enables business model viability. For eVTOLs, the constraint isn't battery cost but energy density; current batteries make many routes economically impossible. This is fundamentally different from cost-driven markets like consumer EVs where incremental weight savings have marginal value. Deep tech founders should map which customer segments face hard physical constraints that only your technology solves versus those seeking incremental optimization. The former will pay 3-5x premiums; the latter will demand cost parity from day one. Match CEO background to the company's primary risk: Ulrich led Leica's 600-person Portugal production facility for a decade before entering batteries, and he frames his value as "I'm a production guy...for me it's very important not to produce only one battery cell in a lab, but millions of cells in highest quality." For a battery company at TRL 3-4 moving toward industrialization, the existential risk isn't the science—it's whether you can manufacture at quality and yield. Many deep tech companies fail because PhD founders remain CEOs through manufacturing scale-up. Ulrich's hire signals that theion's board correctly diagnosed their de-risking sequence. Founders should brutally assess what will kill the company in the next 24 months and ensure the CEO's pattern recognition matches that failure mode. Seek investors where your technology is infrastructure for their thesis: theion's primary investor is "heavily invested in eVTOLs," making theion's battery technology directly relevant to multiple portfolio companies facing the same energy density constraint. This creates structural alignment on timeline expectations—eVTOL companies won't reach commercial scale before 2027-2028 anyway, matching theion's development cycle. The investor understands that battery development "takes time because always when you change a parameter, you have to cycle again to test the cells." This is radically different from a generalist VC expecting SaaS-like iteration speeds. Hardware founders should explicitly map how their technology unblocks other portfolio companies and use this to negotiate patient capital terms and strategic customer introductions. Use competitive landscape size as legitimacy signal, not differentiation: When pressed on disrupting incumbents, Ulrich immediately countered: "We are not the only company working on sulfur and this is good...there are 28 other companies out there." He then differentiated on "monoclinic gamma crystalline structure" validated by Drexel University achieving 4,000+ cycles. This is sophisticated category positioning: the 28 competitors validate that lithium-sulfur is a credible next-generation technology, while the specific crystalline approach provides technical differentiation for those who understand the chemistry. Founders should resist the urge to claim they're the only ones solving a problem in nascent categories—it raises "why hasn't anyone else tried this?" concerns. Instead, position within an emerging category and differentiate on technical approach. Communicate realistic timelines as competence signaling, not weakness: Ulrich states plainly that commercial availability is "at least the next three years" and frames this as doing "first things first and first things right." For sophisticated buyers in aviation and aerospace, compressed timelines signal naivety about certification requirements, manufacturing validation, and qualification testing. A battery company claiming 12-month commercialization would lose credibility with Boeing or Joby Aviation procurement teams who understand the actual development cycles. Deep tech founders should recognize that customer segments accustomed to long development cycles (aerospace, automotive, medical devices) interpret realistic timelines as domain expertise, while consumer/software buyers may interpret them as lack of urgency. Match timeline communication to buyer sophistication. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

CoreStory is building code intelligence platforms that address the fundamental limitation of today's coding agents: their inability to navigate complex enterprise codebases. While foundation models excel at greenfield development, they fail at real-world engineering tasks in systems spanning millions of lines of code. CoreStory's context layer delivers a 44% improvement on SWE-bench, the industry's standard benchmark for measuring coding agent effectiveness on actual GitHub issues. In this episode of BUILDERS, I sat down with Anand Kulkarni, CEO of CoreStory, to explore how his team is enabling the shift to AI-native engineering and seeding the category of spec-driven development across Microsoft, GitHub, and Amazon. Topics Discussed: Building with GPT-3 API 18 months before ChatGPT went public Why even GPT-5 and Opus 4.5 struggle with enterprise codebases on SWE-bench The narrative shift required when selling AI pre- and post-ChatGPT CoreStory's 44% improvement in coding agent performance through context intelligence How "spec-driven development" got adopted by Microsoft, GitHub, and Amazon without formal analyst relations The parallel between JIRA monetizing Agile and CoreStory enabling AI-native engineering Three-channel distribution: direct enterprise, coding agent partnerships via MCP, and hyperscaler/GSI routes Why specs become the source of truth while code becomes disposable in the AI era GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Match your narrative precision to technical depth: CoreStory deploys three distinct positioning strategies based on audience sophistication. For AI practitioners tracking benchmarks, they lead with "44% SWE-bench improvement"—a metric that immediately signals meaningful progress on the hardest problem in the space. For engineering leaders aware of AI tooling but not deep in the research, they focus on velocity gains and ROI metrics. For executives, they describe reverse-engineering codebases into machine-readable specs. The key insight: technical audiences dismiss vague value props, while non-technical audiences get lost in benchmark details. Map your positioning to how your audience measures success in their world. Seed category language through earned adoption, not manufactured consensus: Anand initially called their approach "requirements-driven development" before simplifying to "spec-driven development." Rather than pitching analysts, they used the term consistently in customer conversations, gave talks at GitHub Universe, and shipped demos showing the workflow. When customers naturally adopted the language and community leaders began using similar terminology independently, Microsoft and GitHub followed with their own implementations (like GitHub's SpecKit). The lesson: category language sticks when practitioners choose to use it because it clarifies their work, not because a vendor pushed it. Focus on customer adoption as proof of concept before seeking broader market validation. Position against emergent practices, not just incumbent products: CoreStory doesn't position against legacy code analysis tools—they position as the enabler of AI-native engineering, the discipline that will displace Agile. Anand's insight from watching JIRA's success: "People don't love JIRA. What they love is Agile as a way to move away from waterfall." CoreStory is betting that 10x velocity gains from AI-native practices will drive the same categorical shift. When you're early in a technology wave, attach to the practice change (how teams will work differently) rather than feature comparisons with existing tools. Movements create markets. Design channel strategy around customer problem awareness: CoreStory's three channels map to different stages of buyer sophistication. Direct enterprise comes from teams already deep in AI engineering who've hit the context limitation wall. Coding agent partnerships (via MCP integration with tools like Cognition and Factory) serve builders wanting better AI tooling who haven't diagnosed the context problem yet. Hyperscalers and GSIs distribute into modernization and maintenance projects where AI enablement is emerging as a requirement. Each channel serves a distinct buyer journey stage. Don't force one go-to-market motion—design multiple paths based on where different customer segments are in understanding the problem you solve. Navigate pre-legitimacy markets by hiding the breakthrough: Before ChatGPT, selling anything AI-driven faced immediate skepticism about whether it was "real" or just smoke and mirrors. Anand couldn't lead with AI without triggering disbelief. CoreStory focused on delivered outcomes—"here's what you'll be able to do"—with AI as the mechanism, not the message. Post-ChatGPT, the challenge flipped: everyone expects AI, but now the differentiation question becomes harder. If you're building on emerging technology before market consensus forms, deemphasize the technology until buyers have context to evaluate it. Once the market validates the technology category, shift to demonstrating your specific technical advantage within it. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Lula rebuilt property maintenance from the ground up by solving a fundamental problem: property managers spend 40% of their time coordinating maintenance with zero visibility into work order status. After pivoting from a B2C app when they discovered landlords were their actual users, Bo Lais and his team made a critical insight—deep PMS integration wasn't a feature, it was the entire go-to-market strategy. Today, Lula's 9,000-contractor network processes 1,000 work orders daily across 50 markets, performing 30 HVAC replacements per day at scale that enables direct manufacturer relationships. Now they're commercializing their internal tech stack as Foresight, a standalone SaaS platform launching Q1. In this episode of BUILDERS, Bo breaks down the strategic decisions behind building integrations as distribution, using network density to create pricing advantages competitors can't match, and knowing when to productize your internal tools. Topics Discussed: Why the B2C to B2B pivot happened after discovering usage patterns, not market research How PMS integration eliminated "swivel chair" friction and became the primary distribution channel Strategic partnership depth over breadth: enabling co-selling with AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi rather than partner proliferation The 250-door threshold where maintenance coordination breaks and technology becomes necessary Network density economics: 30 daily HVAC replacements creating leverage for direct manufacturer negotiations and flat-rate service catalogs The decision framework for commercializing Foresight based on upstream customer advisory group feedback Maintaining discipline around ICP when sales teams naturally want to expand GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: System of record integration is your distribution strategy, not a feature: Lula's standalone app created adoption friction because property managers refused to work outside their PMS. Bo's realization: "They need everything to live in their system of record...They don't want swivel chair. And then providing that real time visibility throughout the entire life cycle of the work order was really valuable because prior to that they assign it to a vendor, and then they cross their fingers and hope that it gets done." The integration solved both adoption friction and delivered continuous visibility their workflow demanded. For B2B founders: if your users live in Salesforce, HubSpot, or vertical-specific platforms all day, your integration strategy IS your distribution strategy—build there first, not alongside. Strategic partnerships require enablement infrastructure, not just signed contracts: Bo's approach rejects partnership sprawl: "It's not about stacking on another 10 partnerships, it's about how do we go deeper and enable those partners to co-sell with us and talk about the value props that together we can provide." This means building co-selling toolkits, joint value propositions, and partner success metrics. For B2B founders: one partnership where the partner's sales team actively sells your solution beats ten partnerships where you're just listed in a marketplace. Invest in making partners successful sellers, not collecting logos. ICP discipline requires sales team enforcement mechanisms, not just definitions: Lula knew their ICP but struggled with execution. Bo learned "it's one thing when we understood who our ICP was, but then it's a whole nother thing to adhere to that and get the sales team to adhere to that ICP." The specificity matters: residential (not multifamily), single-family, 250+ doors (where coordination breaks), capped at several thousand doors (before enterprise needs diverge). For B2B founders: document your ICP, but also build the compensation structures, deal approval processes, and CRM workflows that prevent sales from chasing deals outside the sweet spot—even when quota pressure hits. Message outcomes customers measure, not the technology delivering them: Bo's AI framing: "They care about the outcomes, right? If we're able to move the needle on the outcomes and provide a better experience for residents by automating communication, automating the time to schedule, automating the time to get resolution...it's not the how, it's the result." Lula's AI eliminates truck rolls through upfront troubleshooting and improves one-trip resolution rates—that's what property managers track. For B2B founders: if your customer's boss asks "how's that new tool working," they answer with metrics they're held accountable for (resolution time, truck rolls, resident satisfaction), not "it uses AI." Lead with those metrics. Productize internal tools when customer advisory groups request them and you have defensible advantages: Lula commercialized Foresight after upstream customers specifically asked for their tech during advisory sessions. Bo's competitive moat thinking: "Everyone else thinks they're going to do it better with the AI and automation they have. But our competitive moat is that our on-demand network is built inside this AI work order management system. And because of the scale of our network and the buying power, we can provide instant quotes for a lot of services...our competitors that are just doing software don't have this network of contractors nationwide." For B2B founders expanding product lines: customer pull plus operational advantages competitors can't replicate (Lula's contractor density, manufacturer relationships, 1,000 daily work orders of training data) create viable new products. Without both, you're just building undifferentiated software. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

Telo Trucks is reimagining the American pickup for dense urban environments. With over 13,000 reservations and plans to deliver their first vehicles in 2026, Telo is tackling one of the hardest challenges in business: starting an automotive company. In a recent episode of BUILDERS, I sat down with Jason Marks, CEO & Founder of Telo Trucks, to learn about the company's journey from building electric motorcycles to creating a mini truck that's 152 inches long—shorter than a Mini Cooper—but delivers the bed capacity of a full-size pickup. Topics Discussed: Pivoting from electric motorcycles to mini trucks after weekend street research revealed 89% preference for trucks Solving the safety engineering challenge of vehicles with no front overhang and minimal crumple zones Reaching unit profitability at 5,000 vehicles before attempting volume manufacturing Dual go-to-market strategy serving both urban consumers and commercial fleets replacing golf cart + truck combinations Navigating overlapping regulatory jurisdictions: NHTSA, EPA, CARB, IIHS, IICAR, and functional safety standards Running 100 virtual crash simulations daily using automated AI tools to accelerate safety validation Learning from 60+ failed automotive startups that rushed to high-volume manufacturing without proving fundamentals GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Compress customer validation into concentrated research sprints: Jason spent one weekend conducting street interviews across LA and San Francisco—hitting sidewalks, motorcycle meetups, and car meets with concept drawings. 89% of respondents, including dedicated motorcyclists, pointed to the mini truck concept over the motorcycle Telo was building. This wasn't survey data or focus groups—it was showing drawings to real buyers in target markets and asking direct questions. B2B founders should design rapid validation sprints that test core assumptions with target buyers in their natural environment before significant capital deployment. Pivot immediately when validation data is definitive: Telo was in final partner meetings for their motorcycle fundraise when weekend research proved trucks were the opportunity. On Monday morning, they opened the VC call with "Stop. Before you say anything, we're pivoting 100% to mini trucks." The investors called back two hours later and committed. The lesson isn't just willingness to pivot—it's having the conviction to act on clear data even when it disrupts active processes. B2B founders should establish decision thresholds: what percentage of target customers pointing to a different problem would trigger a strategy change? Reverse-engineer failure patterns in your category: Jason systematically studied the 60+ automotive startup failures and identified the core pattern: raising massive capital ($100M-$1B+) created pressure to sprint toward high-volume manufacturing before proving unit economics or even delivering vehicles. Telo's counterstrategy is explicit: achieve unit profitability at 5,000 vehicles using one-tenth the capital of predecessors. This isn't generic "learn from failures"—it's forensic analysis of what killed companies and designing operational constraints that make those failure modes impossible. B2B founders should map the 5-10 companies that died in their category, identify the 2-3 recurring failure patterns, and build those constraints into their operational model. Announce vision publicly to surface latent demand: Telo launched with a full-size foam and fiberglass vehicle model in June 2023 targeting urban consumers. Commercial buyers—downtown construction companies, wineries doing urban delivery, city parks departments—immediately contacted them. These buyers were spending $80,000 combining golf carts for site work with full-size trucks for materials, creating maintenance nightmares. They needed one platform replacing both. B2B founders shouldn't just build in stealth—strategic public announcements surface buyer segments and use cases you didn't model, especially when your product solves problems in adjacent categories. Define unit economics constraints, then cascade all decisions from them: Telo's entire strategy works backward from one milestone: unit profitability at 5,000 vehicles. This constraint cascades: pricing structure, component COGS targets, manufacturing approach (low-volume vs. high-volume tooling), distribution model (direct vs. dealer), insurance program design. Every functional area has targets derived from the profitability constraint. B2B founders should identify their critical economics milestone, then explicitly cascade what must be true across pricing, CAC, gross margin, and operational efficiency to hit it—before building the go-to-market motion. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE! PART TWOIn the 1800s, The Park Hotel in Yorkshire stood as a symbol of elegance — a seaside retreat for mill workers seeking rest and entertainment, and a favored stop for performers traveling through the region. But behind its charm and glamour, a darker story was quietly unfolding.According to investigator Andy Moore, The Park Hotel held secrets far removed from its public image. Whispered rumors suggest that hidden beneath the polished façade were rituals, symbols, and practices that had nothing to do with hospitality — and everything to do with invoking darker forces. From tales of satanic ceremonies to suggestions of sacrificial acts, the stories surrounding the hotel reach far beyond simple ghost sightings.In this episode of The Grave Talks, we peel back the hotel's historical layers and explore the unsettling claims tied to its past. What energies were awakened within those walls? Who — or what — still lingers in the shadows? And how did a seaside escape become associated with one of Yorkshire's most disturbing paranormal legends?#theparkhotel #yorkshirehauntings #thegravetalks #paranormalhistory #haunteduk #ghoststories #satanicrituals #darkhistory #andyMoore #ukparanormal #supernaturalstories #historicmysteryLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

Trener Robotics is solving a fundamental problem in industrial automation: the 5 million robotic arms deployed globally operate without intelligence, relying on 60-year-old procedural programming methods. With $38 Million in total funding—including a just-closed $32 Million Series A—the company compressed an 18-month journey from pre-seed to Series A by focusing ruthlessly on CNC machine tending. In this episode of Category Visionaries, I sat down with Asad Tirmizi, Founder of Trener Robotics, to unpack how 14 years of research in robotics and AI converged with market timing to create what judges recognized as this year's biggest innovation in machining—despite the founding team having zero machining expertise. Topics Discussed: Why Trener Robotics chose CNC machine tending over higher-visibility applications like airplane cleaning The capital efficiency trade-offs between sales cycle length, development complexity, and runway Partnering with three of the five largest robot OEMs controlling 4.3 million of 5 million deployed units Expanding to six countries (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, US) through integrator networks Converting technical curiosity into closed deals in a risk-averse industry with 60-year-old workflows Building training materials in Portuguese for markets the founding team has never visited GTM Lessons For B2B Founders: Sales cycle length determines survival, not TAM size: Trener Robotics rejected compelling applications with massive TAM like airplane cleaning because sales cycles would burn through runway before reaching scale. Asad was explicit: "If your sales cycle is too long, your funding is too less and your development time is too much, that's it, you're out of business." They chose CNC machine tending specifically because manufacturers already budget for robots, understand ROI calculations, and have existing vendor relationships. Calculate your actual time-to-close from first meeting to signed contract, multiply by customer acquisition cost, and build your runway model around that reality—not the TAM slide in your deck. Niche dominance beats horizontal expansion every time: Despite having technology capable of 100+ applications, Trener Robotics committed to machine tending exclusively. Asad's framework: "Making 100 skills is easy. Distributing 100 skills, maintaining 100 skills, marketing hundred skills—that's where most startups break when scaling, not when incubating." The constraint forced them to become the definitive solution for one workflow, enabling repeatable sales motions and concentrated marketing spend. Most founders intellectually agree with focus but fail operationally—they take revenue from adjacent use cases "just this once." Don't. Pick your beachhead, win it completely, then use that cash cow to fund expansion. Industry awards are underutilized credibility hacks: Trener Robotics won the Machine Tool Innovation Award—the machining industry's most prestigious recognition—despite being roboticists with no machining background. This wasn't luck. They studied what innovations historically won, trained their models on data that would produce award-worthy results, and positioned the submission around industry pain points. The award opened OEM partnership conversations that would have taken years otherwise. Identify the 2-3 awards that matter in your category, reverse-engineer what wins, and build your product roadmap accordingly. Third-party validation converts skeptical enterprise buyers faster than any sales deck. Channel partner economics need structural win-win design: Trener Robotics secured partnerships with three of the five largest robot OEMs (controlling 86% of deployed units globally) by solving a specific problem: OEMs sell hardware but lose recurring revenue to system integrators who program robots. Trener Robotics' AI models let OEMs capture software subscription revenue while reducing integrator programming costs. Asad acknowledged they're still learning: "I would not by any stretch of imagination say we have proven how good we are in managing channel partners. It's a journey we are on." But the structural economics work because both sides make more money. When designing channel programs, don't just offer margin points—restructure the value chain so partners access new revenue pools they couldn't capture before. Interest signals are worthless without conversion timeline mapping: Asad's painful admission: "Interest does not mean sales. Pilots do not mean sales. Even letter of interest or contracts to test your equipment does not mean sales." As a technical founder, he initially conflated technical validation with buying intent. The fix: obsessively measure time between interest signal and closed deal, then segment by customer type, deal size, and decision-maker level. Only after mapping this could they accurately forecast and avoid the "too much time in the gray area of interest turning to sales" trap. Build a conversion funnel that tracks days-in-stage, not just stage progression percentages. // Sponsors: Front Lines — We help B2B tech companies launch, manage, and grow podcasts that drive demand, awareness, and thought leadership. www.FrontLines.io The Global Talent Co. — We help tech startups find, vet, hire, pay, and retain amazing marketing talent that costs 50-70% less than the US & Europe. www.GlobalTalent.co // Don't Miss: New Podcast Series — How I Hire Senior GTM leaders share the tactical hiring frameworks they use to build winning revenue teams. Hosted by Andy Mowat, who scaled 4 unicorns from $10M to $100M+ ARR and launched Whispered to help executives find their next role. Subscribe here: https://open.spotify.com/show/53yCHlPfLSMFimtv0riPyM

This is a Grave Talks CLASSIC EPISODE!In the 1800s, The Park Hotel in Yorkshire stood as a symbol of elegance — a seaside retreat for mill workers seeking rest and entertainment, and a favored stop for performers traveling through the region. But behind its charm and glamour, a darker story was quietly unfolding.According to investigator Andy Moore, The Park Hotel held secrets far removed from its public image. Whispered rumors suggest that hidden beneath the polished façade were rituals, symbols, and practices that had nothing to do with hospitality — and everything to do with invoking darker forces. From tales of satanic ceremonies to suggestions of sacrificial acts, the stories surrounding the hotel reach far beyond simple ghost sightings.In this episode of The Grave Talks, we peel back the hotel's historical layers and explore the unsettling claims tied to its past. What energies were awakened within those walls? Who — or what — still lingers in the shadows? And how did a seaside escape become associated with one of Yorkshire's most disturbing paranormal legends?#theparkhotel #yorkshirehauntings #thegravetalks #paranormalhistory #haunteduk #ghoststories #satanicrituals #darkhistory #andyMoore #ukparanormal #supernaturalstories #historicmysteryLove real ghost stories? Want even more?Become a supporter and unlock exclusive extras, ad-free episodes, and advanced access:

A soft, feminine moment created just for you. Happy Valentines Day!!!

Access all 430+ episodes of Sleep Whispers (including lots of Story Time, Trivia Time, & Whisperpedia episodes) by becoming a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!). Try the podcast, Sleep With Me: https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/subscribe/ Become a Silk+ Member (FREE for a limited time!) and enjoy over 600 total episodes from these podcasts: Sleep Whispers (430+ episodes) Calm … Continue reading Trivia Time | 30 More Curious Questions & Answers (A202) | Whispered Bedtime Sleep Stories

It's a new year and a CHONKY urban legends episode is waiting for you. Featuring a long-time bathroom haunting, the cosplay to spouse pipeline, and how sometimes retail jobs are scarier than the monster under the bed! Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of child endangerment, abusive relationships, kidnapping, and illness. Housekeeping- Books: Check out our previous book recommendations, guests' books, and more at spiritspodcast.com/books- Call to Action: Send in those urban legend emails as you head home for the holidays!- Submit Your Urban Legends Audio: Call us! 617-420-2344Sponsors- Bookshop.org, where you can now use the code we shared in the midroll to get 10% off your purchase! Find Us Online- Website & Transcripts: spiritspodcast.com- Patreon: patreon.com/spiritspodcast- Merch: spiritspodcast.com/merch- Instagram: instagram.com/spiritspodcast- Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/spiritspodcast.com- Twitter: twitter.com/spiritspodcast- Tumblr: spiritspodcast.tumblr.comCast & Crew- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin- Editor: Bren Frederick- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman- Multitude: multitude.productionsAbout UsSpirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.