Futureproof Founder Podcast

Jeff Mains sits down with Jim Effner, founder of P2P Group and a 36-year veteran of Northwestern Mutual, where he grew a firm from 63 to 127 financial advisors and nearly 400 total staff before selling and launching his own boutique sales training company. Jim breaks down what truly separates elite sales performers from everyone else — and it's not the strategy. It's mindset, belief system, and th...

Brian Will — Wall Street Journal bestselling author, serial entrepreneur, and founder/CEO of Living Forever AI — joins host Jeff Mains for a wide-ranging conversation on entrepreneurship, scaling, sales, and what it truly means to leave a legacy. Brian has built and helped build companies worth over half a billion dollars across 10 ventures in five industries. Now, he's setting his sights on disru...

What if AI isn't just a tool to plug into your business — but a reason to redesign the entire thing? In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Steven Wunker, managing director of New Markets Advisors and bestselling author of AI and the Octopus Organization: Building the Super Intelligent Firm . Steven has been working in AI since 2012 and has advised dozens of Fortune 500 companies on how to unl...

Nikki Barua — immigrant, serial entrepreneur, and CEO of Flip Work — joins Jeff Mains for a conversation on what it truly takes to build something outsized in the AI age. Drawing on two decades of experience in M&A, corporate strategy, and scaling tech businesses, Nikki shares why reinvention isn't a one-time event but a survival skill. The conversation digs into the mindset required to make b...

Mike Collins is a serial entrepreneur turned venture capitalist who has spent his career at the intersection of technology, innovation, and investing. Starting at a VC firm right out of college in 1986, he went on to found companies like Kid Galaxy and Big Idea Group before launching Alumni Ventures in 2013 — now one of the most active VC firms in the world with nearly $1.6 billion raised from ind...

Most SaaS founders obsess over acquisition — but what happens after the sale is where loyalty is either built or silently lost. In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Ken Rapp, CEO and co-founder of Blue Stream, to explore the largely overlooked post-purchase experience and why it may be the biggest growth lever hiding in plain sight. Ken shares the story behind Blue Stream — born from a crack...

In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Stanley Leong — former IBM/Agilent engineer turned bestselling author and private wealth advisor — to explore what it truly means to engineer your finances. Stanley brings his analytical, systems-driven engineering background to personal wealth building, and the result is a refreshingly practical framework for tech founders and high-income professionals w...

What if the most valuable data in your company isn't in a dashboard — it's buried in stories no one is asking for? In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with James Warren, founder and CEO of Share More Stories and creator of the SEEK platform — a human experience insights tool that helps organizations uncover the emotional drivers behind employee and customer behavior through narrative-driven rese...

In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Paige Wiese — founder and CEO of Tree Ring Digital, a Denver-based digital agency with 16 years in the business. Paige brings a unique perspective to digital marketing rooted in her background in architecture, and uses that framework to help companies build websites and marketing systems with intentional structure, clear user flow, and long-term durabilit...

AJ, founder and CEO of Daylight — an award-winning, Mac-exclusive CRM — joins Jeff Mains to share one of the most quietly remarkable stories in SaaS: a decades-long journey from refugee to bootstrapped CEO. AJ traces his path from arriving in Canada with nothing, to bartering his labor for computer access, to navigating the dot-com crash, multiple pivots, and a delicate transition from on-premise...

Javier Lozano Jr. didn't come up through brand or PR. He came through sales — and that lens has shaped everything about how he approaches growth marketing. Starting his first business in the teeth of the 2008 recession with a personal guarantee on a five-year lease, Javier learned early that you have to be strategic when the market won't forgive waste. That crucible turned him into one of the shar...

Andy Ellwood is a repeat founder whose career took him from early-stage mobile startups acquired by Facebook and Google, through eight years building Basket.com, to shutting it down during the pandemic — and ultimately back into the arena with Stretch, an AI-powered grocery platform built to give families price transparency, shopping intelligence, and an advocate at checkout. In this conversation,...

Anthony Chiaravallo, founder and CEO of Vallo Media — a performance marketing agency that has placed over $100 million in paid media — joins Jeff Mains on SaaS Fuel for a candid, no-BS conversation about what actually works (and what doesn't) in B2B paid advertising. The conversation goes deep on performance media for SaaS: why cold lead gen ads are the fastest way to burn budget, how to build war...

What happens when a bored teenager starts a Discord trading group and accidentally discovers the power of video? For Elijah Khasabo, co-founder of Vidovo, it became the foundation for a bootstrapped UGC and influencer platform now serving over 200 brands and 20,000 creators. In this episode, Elijah shares the unfiltered origin story of Vidovo — from running negative for the first six months to cro...

In this episode, filmmaker-turned-brand strategist Jake Isham breaks down what authentic storytelling really looks like in business. Jake has worked with over 150 entrepreneurs and brands, including Grant Cardone, Callaway, and 511 Tactical, creating content that's generated over 1 billion views. He shares practical frameworks for translating product features into compelling narratives, why consis...

In this episode of SaaS Fuel, host Jeff Mains sits down with Allen Cooper, co-founder and CEO of Ready List, to unpack what it really takes to build and scale SaaS companies in healthcare—one of the slowest, most regulated industries on the planet. The conversation dives deep into navigating 12-18 month enterprise sales cycles, recovering from product failures, hiring salespeople with domain credi...

In this episode of SaaS Fuel, host Jeff Mains sits down with Mike "Damp" Damphousse, co-founder of Category Design Advisors and co-author of "The Category Creation Formula." With three decades of experience as a founder, CEO, CMO, investor, and advisor, Mike reveals why most companies lose before they even start—not because their product is weak, but because they're competing in categories defined...

Drew Sechrist, CEO and co-founder of Connect the Dots, takes us on a journey from being Salesforce's 36th employee to building his own venture addressing one of B2B sales' most persistent challenges: unlocking the hidden power of professional networks. In this conversation, Drew shares inside stories from Salesforce's scrappy early days in 1999, when "SaaS" didn't even exist as a term and the comp...

In this episode of SaaS Fuel, Jeff Mains sits down with Marc Rust, founder of Consequently Creative, to challenge everything you think you know about branding. Marc reveals why the strongest brands aren't built on logos and taglines—they're built on relationships, courtship, and genuine human connection. You'll discover why "different is always better," how visual storytelling requires education a...

In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Tom Rossi, technical co-founder of Higher Pixels and BuzzSprout, to explore what it really takes to build sustainable SaaS businesses. Tom shares the journey from running an internet service provider in the late '90s to creating BuzzSprout, one of the most beloved podcast hosting platforms. The conversation dives deep into the importance of focus over fea...

In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Barbara Wittmann, a 25-year veteran of IT transformation who has pioneered the concept of "human infrastructure" - the invisible framework of trust, clarity, and collaboration that determines whether technology projects succeed or fail. Barbara shares her journey from mountain biking and logistics to SAP consulting, and how she discovered that most techno...

In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Michael Ferranti, a veteran of developer tools and cloud-native infrastructure with over a decade of experience at companies like PortWorks, Teleport, and Unleash. Michael shares insights on feature management, the critical role of feature flags in modern software delivery, and how to effectively market to developers. The conversation explores why "friend...

In this episode, Jeff Mains sits down with Martin Lesperance, an engagement specialist and interactive keynote speaker on a mission to help people fall back in love with their work. Martin shares his powerful "Four Not So Surprising Secrets" framework for rebuilding engagement, motivation, and momentum in the workplace. From the symbolism of the yellow smiley ball to practical strategies for comba...

On this episode of SaaS Fuel, host Jeff Mains dives deep with Alex Berkovic, co-founder and CEO of Sphynx, a company modernizing compliance workflows in financial services with AI-powered agents. Alex shares his journey from design engineering at Imperial College and MIT, through founding Adorno AI, to transforming compliance for fintechs, banks, and payments processors with Sphynx. The conversati...

In this episode of SaaS Fuel, host Jeff Mains sits down with Marlena Sarunac, co-founder of The Company Advice and marketing strategist for early-stage startups in complex, regulated industries like HealthTech, FinTech, and InsurTech. Marlena shares her "playbook nicely" approach—a proven framework that helps founders avoid reinventing the wheel while building go-to-market foundations that scale....