Sarah Du

Early Access

Business EN ↓ 7 episodes

Go behind the scenes with the people who built it first - the founders and early hires of today’s fastest-growing startups. We dive into the bets they made, the mistakes, the wins, and everything in between!

Author

Sarah Du

Episodes

Building 0 to 1 AI Products at Nooks (with Alex Zhang) 08.07.2026 24:31

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...

Inside the first BizOps seat at Cogent Security (with Grace Hua) 03.06.2026 36:32

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...

Inside Braintrust: Scaling a Category-Defining AI Evals Platform (with Sarah Zeng) 02.03.2026 26:04

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...

Designing the Standard for AI Detection (with Olivia, GPTZero's First Product Designer) 03.02.2026 24:47

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...

Inside the First BizOps Seat at Column (with Charlie Liao) 06.11.2025 24:01

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...

Building Clay’s Marketing Engine from Zero (with Matt Maiale, Clay’s First Marketing Hire) 14.10.2025 27:27

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...

Lessons & Early Days Inside Climate Unicorn Watershed (with Tammy Tseng) 17.09.2025 28:16

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...