🎙️ Backstage Tech by George Helgesen

Chris Zeunstrom is the co-founder of Ruca — a design cooperative that builds products and brands for startups and large enterprises. Ruca has no outside investors : a cut of its services revenue funds its own ventures. One of them is Yorba , a digital decluttering platform with over 30,000 members , where Chris is co-founder and CEO. Ruca is also part of the ownership group of Atlético Clube de Po...

Jesper Bylund is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of INXM — a Berlin company building an AI-powered process execution engine for enterprises. INXM's bet is compiled AI : instead of letting an LLM do the work directly, the AI writes a deterministic plan that runs exactly the same way every time — auditable, reliable and repeatable thousands of times. Jesper started in game design, then...

Minh Hoang is a product leader and community builder , working on AI products for highly regulated industries like banking, insurance and government. Minh led product at OpenBB , the #1 open-source project in finance, used by 300+ organizations including some of the biggest banks and financial institutions. AI Builders Vietnam , the community Minh founded, brings together developers and founders s...

Peter Damm is the co-founder and CEO of Granite — a company building modular data centers for the agentic cloud : shipping-container and rack-sized units placed right next to available energy, instead of waiting years for a hyperscale site. Granite came out of a venture studio exploring the agentic economy. The team tested agent products first, then realized the real bottleneck was underneath — po...

Louis Nicholls is the co-founder of SparkLoop — the #1 recommendation network that connects the best newsletters across every platform so they can grow each other. SparkLoop exists because newsletters are the one content type with no discovery tool. Podcasts have Spotify and YouTube. Writing has the social platforms. Newsletters have nothing, so somebody had to build the layer that helps readers f...

Jens Larsson is the founder & CEO of Raqt — a 🇸🇪 Swedish sports tech company and the leading pickleball platform , connecting players, events and communities across 38 countries. Raqt didn't start as software. Jens found pickleball around 2017, co-started the Swedish Pickleball Federation , and launched one of Europe's first pickleball equipment web shops because nobody in Europe was...

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In this episode of my micro-podcast, I break down the 3 business ops B2B software and service founders should automate first — the ones that quietly eat 40–50% of revenue . Most founders scale the expensive way. More clients means more people to del...

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In this episode of my micro-podcast, I break down 7 roles where AI lets you grow output without growing headcount — pulled from real automations I've built with B2B founders. Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software foun...

Thomas England is the CTO of Origin Smart Controls — a company building software for IoT device management in commercial buildings . Origin came out of the mechanical and electrical engineering world, not the software world. That's the whole point: mechanical engineers and software engineers build the platform together, so it solves the problem the way a building engineer understands it, not...

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In this episode of my micro-podcast, I'm breaking down everything I learned in 8 years building software with B2B founders — 10 lessons in 12 minutes . Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software founders, here's what...

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In this episode of my micro-podcast, I'm breaking down 7 things every software founder must do to survive while AI eats the SaaS market around them. Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software founders, here's what sep...

Richard Mole is the founder of Same Day Courier Network (SDCN) — a well-respected B2B freight exchange marketplace in the UK, built over the last decade without outside investment. Richard has spent his career in transport, growing SDCN into a platform trusted by thousands of couriers, owner-drivers, and large transport companies. In this episode, Richard breaks down how copycats keep failing in t...

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉  Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #16 of "Backstage Tech", we're walking through a 10-point framework to tell whether you're talking to a real development partner — or a devshop that will burn your time and cash. Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder...

Steve Mast is an entrepreneur, AI advisor, and co-founder of Twenty44 — a company helping organizations move from AI experimentation to real adoption. Steve spent over 3 decades building digital companies, including Delvinia , where he built Asking Canadians and Methodify before selling to Sago in 2021. Now he's focused on one problem: why 45% of organizations have invested in AI, but only 12...

Ian Ash is the co-founder of Dig Insights — a global market research consultancy with its own SaaS platform, Dig One, trusted by McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Meta, Pernod Ricard and dozens of world-leading brands. What started as a traditional consultancy grew into an AI-native market research company with patented algorithms, a 30% compound annual growth rate over its first decade, and a successfu...

▶️ Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #13 of "Backstage Tech", we're walking through a simple 5-step framework to build a custom AI agent for your software product — without blowing your budget on something your users will never touch again. Pulling from 8+ yea...

Henry Lynch is the CTO and co-founder of Vsimple — an AI-powered process automation platform trusted by ProLift Toyota, RWM Casters, Blue & Co, and dozens of manufacturers across North America. While most competitors hand you a signup form and leave you to figure it out, Vsimple takes the opposite approach — designing, implementing, and supporting every workflow with a hands-on customer succes...

🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #11 of "Backstage Tech", I'm calling out the 5 mistakes that kill MVPs before they ever launch — and what to do instead. After 8+ years working with founders who've burned through budgets building products nobody wanted, I'm...

Rafael Franco spent 20 years leading product and engineering for companies like Influencer.com and Atlassian, managing $50M+ portfolios. Now he's a fractional CPTO helping startups scale — and building his own SaaS product, AdsForBands, helping artists sell out their shows. In this episode, Rafael breaks down the reality of building with AI, why most founders confuse "it works" with...

🎥 Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@georgehelgesen 👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #9 of "Backstage Tech", we're tackling the bottleneck every software founder hits: too many customer requests, too many ideas, too few hands to get things done. Pulling from 8+ years working with founders stuck at the growth ceiling —...

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #8 of "Backstage Tech", we're breaking down your 2026 product playbook — and if you're still playing by the old rules, your competitors are moving at warp speed while you're left in the dust. Pulling from 8+ years working shoulder-to-shoulder with software founders, I'm exposing...

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #7 of "Backstage Tech", we're breaking down how AI totally flipped product development in 2025 — and if you're still building software like it's 2023, your competitors are eating your lunch while you're wondering what happened. Pulling from 7 years working with dozens of founders...

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #6 of "Backstage Tech", we're unpacking how to run a complete MVP discovery phase in one week using AI and just two people — because nine out of ten software projects blow past budget and timeline when founders skip discovery. Pulling from 7 years working with dozens of founders at ⚙️ ProCoders...

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #5 of "Backstage Tech", we're breaking down why most founders think they're building MVPs when they're actually funding expensive science projects nobody asked for. Pulling from 7 years in the weeds at ⚙️ ProCoders , I walk through the five mistakes that kill MVPs before launch — and...

👉 Let's connect on LinkedIn — send me a request and mention the podcast. In episode #4 of "Backstage Tech", we're unpacking the truth behind OpenAI's "Agent Builder" and why calling it that was a brilliant marketing move — even though it's actually a workflow builder. Pulling from 7 years in the trenches at ⚙️ ProCoders , I break down the critical differenc...