Early Access

Join me in conversation with Alex Zhang, Nooks' first PM and now Group PM. Nooks is an AI platform building the agent workspace for GTM teams, backed by Kleiner Perkins and Lachy Groom. Alex joined as employee ~50 and is now a group PM, driving many of Nooks 0 to 1 product bets. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Alex Zhang and Nooks 02:15 Career Journey: From DoorDash to Nooks 03:43 Understanding...

Join me in conversation with Grace Hua, head of Biz Ops at Cogent Security. Cogent is building autonomous cyberdefense and recently announced its $42M Series A led by Greylock and BCV. Grace joined as employee ~15 and has spent the last 9 months working across hiring, partnerships, fundraising, and more - essentially operating as an extension of the founders as the company scales. Timestamps: 00:0...

Join me in conversation with Sarah Zeng, who has gone from investing to operating at the forefront of AI - first as one of the first 50 employees at Character AI and now scaling Braintrust. Braintrust is a go-to platform for AI evals and observability. They recently announced their $80M Series B, led by ICONIQ and joined by returnees a16z, Greylock, Elad Gil, basecase and others. Timestamps: 00:00...

Join me in conversation with my friend Olivia Kusio, the first and founding product designer at GPTZero — one of the breakout AI companies of the last two years. Olivia joined as the 5th employee. Two years later, GPTZero has grown to millions of users and $25M+ in revenue. We cover: 🎨 Designing for trust in AI products 🧠 How students and teachers are really using AI 💬 Building culture inside a...

What does it look like to be the first BizOps hire at a company rebuilding banking from the ground up? In this episode, I chat with Charlie Liao , who joined Column - founded by William Hockey, one of Plaid's co-founders - when the team was around 70 people. We talk about what drew him from fintech investing to operating, how he’s defining the BizOps function at one of the most technical startups...

When Matt Maiale joined Clay , the go-to-market platform helping sales teams find, enrich, and personalize outreach at scale, there were just five people and no marketing playbook. Clay now serves thousands of customers and recently raised a $100M Series C at a $3.1B valuation. In this conversation, we talk about how Matt chose Clay at the seed stage, built the company’s growth flywheel, and devel...

In this conversation, I get to talk with Tammy, climate unicorn Watershed's 25th employee and second data hire. We discuss Tammy's journey from Quora to Watershed, how founders can attract and retain early talent, the evolution of data roles in startups, and more. Enjoy! Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction to Tammy and Watershed 01:21 Choosing Watershed 03:28 Recruitment Insights: What Watershed Did Ri...