Traction Podcast

Andy Johns helped build some of the most important growth engines in Silicon Valley. Facebook. Twitter. Quora. Wealthfront. He worked across nine billion-dollar companies, became one of the most respected growth leaders in tech, and reached the level of career success most founders dream about. Then he walked away. Because achievement had stopped working. In this episode, Andy joins Lloyed Lobo on...

What if the future of human performance is not another supplement, another wearable, or another biohack, but a better relationship with your own data? Dr. Steven Muskal has spent more than four decades at the edge of AI, chemistry, biology, and drug discovery. Before AI was cool, he was using neural networks to study protein structure. Before everyone was talking about personal AI, he was building...

Dr. Tom Elliott has spent more than four decades at the forefront of diabetes, endocrinology, and metabolic health. He is the founder and medical director of BC Diabetes, an associate professor at UBC, and has been involved in more than 20 pharmaceutical clinical trials exploring the future of obesity, diabetes, and GLP-1 therapies. In this episode, Dr. Elliott breaks down why obesity, insulin res...

Julia Klim is redefining what it means to live and perform well in a high-pressure world. As former Head of Strategic Partnerships at Equinox Group, she helped transform the brand from a luxury gym into a full-spectrum healthspan platform. She launched Optimize by Equinox, an elite longevity program that pairs members with doctors, trainers, nutritionists, and sleep coaches using deep biometric da...

Caroline Mundell has been competing at the highest levels of Olympic weightlifting while running two gyms and raising three kids.  She is a 7x Provincial Masters Olympic Lifting Champion, 2x National Champion, Bronze medalist at the 2018 World championships Barcelona, and most recently the 2025 National Functional Fitness Gold Medalist. Her background in behavioral neuroscience and sports science...

Mark MacLeod, founder of Limitless. CEO, has sat with some of the most consequential founders in tech. As Ex-CFO of Shopify and FreshBooks, GP at Real Ventures, Canada's largest seed fund, and founder of a leading SaaS investment bank, he has personally overseen over $1 billion in exits. He has seen exactly what ends a founder's run, and it is rarely the market. After studying 11 founders...

Peter Danenberg has spent his career at the edge of what humans and machines can do. As a senior software engineer at Google DeepMind, he leads development on Gemini.  Before tech, he co-founded CrossFit Crown City, scaling it to 450 members across two locations. He holds degrees from Harvard and USC spanning computer science, philosophy, classics and piano, and has spoken at Davos, the House of L...

Jim Donnelly knows how to build health empires. As the founder and former CEO of Restore Hyper Wellness, he scaled a cryotherapy and wellness franchise to hundreds of locations before stepping away. Then life forced him to start over. A near-fatal car accident, the loss of his father, and his own regenerative medicine journey completely changed how he thought about health. Today, he leads Humanaut...

Jason Syversen has spent more than 25 years operating at the highest levels of cybersecurity, venture capital, and applied technology. As a Program Manager at DARPA, he managed a $100M cybersecurity portfolio focused on advanced national security systems. He later founded and exited Siege Technologies, building a profitable cyber company in a highly competitive market. Since then, he has invested...

Silicon Valley legend Ed Baker, CPO at WHOOP and ex growth chief at FB and Uber, is our guest on this episode of Traction. Ed helped Facebook cross one billion monthly active users, joining after scaling and selling his 25-million-user startup, Friendly, to the company. He then became VP of Product and Growth at Uber, where he set weekly trips as the north-star metric and helped take the company's...

What if the reason most high-performance careers end early isn’t effort, but how performance is managed over time? In this episode, Dr. Wayne Diesel, elite sports physiologist and long-time performance leader across the NBA, NFL, Premier League, and international rugby, and Ray Walia explore how founders can apply elite athlete principles to build sustainable, long-term performance. After decades...

What if you could extend your healthspan, sharpen your focus, and increase your stress resilience by decoding your DNA? In this powerhouse episode, Dr. Matt Dawson, ER physician and early longevity pioneer turned health tech founder, and Lloyed Lobo discuss how startup founders can optimize their health span while scaling high-impact companies. After years of watching patients suffer from avoidabl...

Building a startup rewards intensity, not longevity. In this episode of Traction, Alex Bruyn joins Lloyed Lobo to challenge the founder playbook. Drawing from repeated burnout and serious health failures, Lloyed argues that hustle is not a badge of honor, it’s a structural flaw in how entrepreneurship is practiced. They examine how stress compounds over time, why founders are treated nothing like...

Most startup stories focus on the win. Very few talk about what it costs to get there. In this episode, Lloyed Lobo sits down with Alex Bruyn, co-founder of Karak Creative, for a candid conversation about the realities founders rarely say out loud. From taking an unconventional path into tech to building a fast-growing company under constant pressure, Lloyed shares the parts of the journey that do...

The talent market has shifted in ways that make hiring harder for early-stage teams. In this episode, Melissa Kwan and Lloyed Lobo talk about why salaries jumped, why interviews often look better than the work that follows, and how these gaps slow companies down. They share what they’ve learned from hiring mistakes, how expectations changed after the unicorn wave, and what founders should pay atte...

Fake it till you make it is a phrase founders hear early and often. Ambition can drift past honesty faster than most founders realize. This episode looks at how pitching and fundraising expectations shape the stories founders tell and the pressure to appear further along than reality. Lloyed Lobo and Melissa Kwan unpack the pressure behind projections, user claims, and the instinct to present a ve...

Building a startup together tests everything you believe about trust. In this episode, serial entrepreneur Lloyed Lobo and Melissa Kwan, CEO at eWebinar, unpack the cofounder confessions founders whisper but rarely admit: love turned liability, handshake deals gone wrong, and the quiet resentment that kills partnerships faster than failure itself. From equity fights to emotional burnouts, they dis...

Building a startup is like jumping off a plane and assembling the parachute mid-air. In this episode, serial entrepreneur Lloyed Lobo and Melissa Kwan, CEO at eWebinar, break down the reality of scaling: the discipline constraints create, the myths founders chase, and why too many companies lose sight of customers in pursuit of hype. From the unicorn bubble to billion dollar collapses overnight, t...

Most founders don’t need venture capital — they just need the truth about their options. In this episode, Greg Head , Founder of Practical Founders and Gregslist , shares why most founders don’t need to follow the venture capital path to succeed —and how alternative strategies often lead to better outcomes. Greg draws on three decades of software industry experience and his deep network of over 50...

If you're building before validating the market, you're not a founder — you’re a hopeful builder. In this episode, Bocar Dia , Partner and GM at Forum Ventures , shares how to build a capital-efficient, scalable sales motion in B2B SaaS, from idea to product-market fit and beyond. Drawing from his early days at Hootsuite and advising 30+ founders annually, Bocar unpacks the frameworks and mindsets...

Scaling without losing speed is harder than it looks — especially when you're chasing enterprise customers and building an AI-native platform. Lindsey Scrase , Chief Operating Officer of Checkr, Inc. , reveals how her customer-first mindset, forged during her tenure at Google Cloud, is driving Checkr’s transformation into a core hiring infrastructure platform while scaling AI across operations. Wi...

Most GTM teams are stuck in a 10-year-old playbook — Anthony Enrico , Founder and CEO of LeanScale , shows how to break the cycle. Previously Head of RevOps at Boast. AI, where he helped scale the company past $20M ARR, Anthony now advises and enables dozens of founders and revenue leaders to engineer growth without burning headcount. He also shares how they help high-growth startups scale RevOps...

Crises aren’t just setbacks — they’re strategic moments to elevate customer experience. In this episode, Jeff Titterton , Chief Marketing Officer of Stripe , breaks down why investing in customers during uncertain times is the most resilient path to long-term growth. Drawing from his time as COO at Zendesk and insights from scaling through economic downturns, Jeff highlights how modern businesses...

Innovation is the driving force behind unlocking better patient experiences and improving access to quality care. In this episode, Derek Streat , Co-Founder and Former CEO at DexCare , shares his journey of transforming healthcare access through innovative technology solutions. Derek dives into how DexCare optimizes the way health systems manage digital demand, making healthcare more accessible an...

The venture capital landscape is evolving fast, and founders who don’t adapt will be left behind. Roy Luo , General Partner at ICONIQ , shares insights on the shifting dynamics of startup funding and what it takes to scale in 2025. With investments in companies like Figma, Canva and Ramp, Roy breaks down key trends in fintech, AI-driven business models and the future of venture capital. Specifical...