The Room Podcast

In this bonus episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Packy McCormick , founder of Not Boring and Not Boring Capital, an investment firm focused on backing ambitious technology companies tackling large, complex industries. Through his writing, investing, and storytelling, Packy has built one of the most influential platforms in venture capital, helping founders explain difficult technical busin...

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Sunil Dhaliwal, founder and managing partner of Amplify Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on backing technical founders building infrastructure software, developer tools, cybersecurity, AI, and other foundational technologies. Before founding Amplify, Sunil spent 14 years at Battery Ventures, where he invested through both the...

In this bonus episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Ben Ling , Founder and General Partner of Bling Capital , an early-stage venture firm that has backed companies including Airtable, Lyft, Square, Palantir, and many others. Before becoming a full-time investor, Ben held leadership roles at Google, Facebook, and YouTube, where he helped build products at massive scale and gained a front-row s...

In our season finale episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Jamie Siminoff , inventor of Ring , the smart home security company best known for turning the front door into a connected safety platform. Ring builds video doorbells, cameras, alarms, and neighborhood safety tools that help people monitor and protect what matters most. Before Ring became one of the most recognizable home security br...

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Scott Stevenson , CEO and Co-Founder of Spellbook . Spellbook is an AI-powered platform helping lawyers draft and review contracts faster using generative AI directly within their existing workflows. Spellbook enables legal teams to accelerate contract creation and negotiation by embedding AI into workflow tools allowing for real-time drafting, ed...

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Ram Palaniappan , founder and CEO of Earnin , a fintech company reimagining how people get paid by giving employees access to their earnings in real time rather than waiting for traditional payroll cycles. Earnin is building a new kind of payroll system—one that shifts power from employers to employees by enabling on-demand and continuous pay. Ins...

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we sit down with Ben Witte , Founder and CEO of Recess , a consumer wellness brand pioneering a new category of functional beverages designed to help people relax, unwind, and feel better in an increasingly high-stress world. Recess blends ingredients like magnesium, adaptogens, and other functional compounds into beautifully branded drinks that position themse...

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Scott Woody , Co-Founder of Metronome , a platform helping companies implement usage-based billing and modernize how they monetize software. Metronome enables businesses to move beyond rigid subscription pricing and instead charge customers based on actual product usage. The platform sits at the core of a new shift in SaaS: pricing that aligns dir...

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Ryan Daniels , Founder and CEO of Crosby , an AI-first law firm rethinking how legal work gets delivered. Crosby combines AI systems with human legal expertise to provide faster, more transparent, and more scalable legal services, moving away from traditional billable hours toward outcome-driven work. Crosby is part of a broader shift in professio...

In this episode of The Room Podcast, we speak with Alex Halliday , founder and CEO of AirOps , a platform helping companies build AI-powered content workflows and automate complex marketing operations. AirOps enables marketing and growth teams to orchestrate large-scale content generation using structured workflows, AI models, data integrations, and human-in-the-loop systems. The platform is part...

In this season opener of The Room Podcast, we speak with Nirav Tolia , the co-founder and CEO of Nextdoor , the neighborhood network designed to connect verified neighbors and strengthen local communities. Nirav shares and refelcts the story behind building Nextdoor, one of the world’s largest hyperlocal social platforms, and reflects on the lessons he has learned scaling a product designed around...

Welcome back to another episode of The Room Podcast! This week, Claudia and Madison sit down with Julie Bornstein , founder and CEO of Daydream , a new AI-powered shopping platform reimagining how people discover fashion online. Julie is a two-time founder with deep roots in digital commerce, having previously helped build Stitch Fix and later founded The Yes, which was acquired by Pinterest. With...

In this special live panel episode of The Room Podcast from Inside Summit 2025, host Ash Kumra sits down with an all-star group of AI and product leaders: Noah MacCallum of OpenAI , Grant Lee of Gamma , Malte Ubl of Vercel , and Chris Messina , inventor of the hashtag and longtime product strategist. Together, they represent the cutting edge of applied AI, developer platforms, design tooling, and...

In this special Inside Summit episode of The Room Podcast, Claudia moderates a powerhouse panel featuring Michelle Edwards , Partner at Perkins Coie, Indy Guha , GP of VMG, Dan Kang , CFO of Mercury, and Jared Roesch , a founder who recently exited to NVIDIA.  When startups challenge incumbents, winning deals requires more than just a great product. This episode shares how to master founder sales...

Welcome back to another LIVE rendition of The Room Podcast! This week, we are back at our live conference, Inside Summit. Listen in as we sit down with Michel Tricot , Co-Founder and CEO of Airbyte — the open-source platform that’s transforming how companies move data across their modern stacks. Airbyte gives teams the ability to extract and load data from virtually any source, empowering both AI-...

Welcome back to The Room Podcast! This week, Claudia and Madison sit down with Tomer London , Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto , the all-in-one people platform that simplifies payroll, benefits, and HR for over 400,000 small businesses across the U.S. From humble beginnings as ZenPayroll, Gusto has become one of the most beloved products in the SMB ecosystem—known for turning one of t...

Welcome back to another episode of The Room Podcast! This week, Claudia and Madison sit down with William Allen , Head of Emerging Tech and AI at Cloudflare , and previously a key leader at Adobe and Behance. Will has spent his career at the intersection of creativity, technology, and infrastructure—from helping launch TED Talks and building Behance into a global hub for creatives, to leading init...

We are back with another live rendition of The Room Podcast! This week, Madison sits down with Jack Barrett , Co-Founder and CEO of Almost Friday Media , the creative force behind the viral comedy brand Friday Beers. After starting and leaving his career in investment banking, Jack followed his storytelling instincts into media, co-founding a creator-first company that now spans comedy, live event...

We are back with another live installment of The Room Podcast! This week, we sit down with Barry McCardel and Caitlin Colgrove , Co-Founders of Hex , the collaborative data workspace trusted by teams around the world. Hex empowers data scientists, analysts, and business operators to explore, visualize, and share insights in one connected platform—bringing together code, no-code tools, and now AI-p...

Welcome back to The Room Podcast! This week, Claudia and Madison sit down with Eric Simons , Co-Founder and CEO of StackBlitz and creator of Bolt.new , the AI-powered development platform redefining how people build web and mobile apps. From humble beginnings coding in Naperville, Illinois, to literally living inside AOL’s Palo Alto offices at age 19, Eric’s journey is a Silicon Valley legend. Sta...

Welcome back to another episode of The Room Podcast! This week, we sit down with Celine Halioua , Founder and CEO of Loyal , a biotech company pioneering FDA-approved longevity drugs for dogs. From a childhood surrounded by rescue animals to an academic journey through neuroscience, health economics, and venture capital, Celine’s path to entrepreneurship is as winding as it is inspiring. Today, Lo...

This week on The Room Podcast, Claudia and Madison sit down with Zach Lloyd , Founder and CEO of Warp . Before founding Warp, Zach spent nearly a decade at Google, where he led engineering on Google Sheets and Docs, and later co-founded the startup Self-Made before launching Warp in 2020. Warp is a modern re-imagining of the command line, transforming one of the most widely used developer tools in...

In this episode of The Room Podcast , hosts Claudia Laurie and Madison McIlwain sit down with serial entrepreneur Craig Walker , founder and CEO of Dialpad . Craig’s story begins in Cupertino, back when apricot orchards defined the neighborhood and a young Steve Jobs lived just a few houses down. From those early days in Silicon Valley, Craig went on to earn degrees from Berkeley and Georgetown be...

Welcome to a special bonus episode of The Room Podcast, recorded live at New York Tech Week! This week, we're thrilled to chat with Shreya Murthy , Co-Founder and CEO of Partiful , the modern social events platform that is revolutionizing how we make plans and build real-world relationships. Since launching in 2021, Partiful has scaled to millions of users and earned major accolades, including Goo...

In this season’s finale of The Room Podcast, we're thrilled to chat with Neil Parikh , Co-Founder of Casper and current Co-Founder of Slingshot . Neil first disrupted the mattress industry by building Casper into a household name, pioneering the direct-to-consumer sleep revolution before taking the company public. Now, he's tackling an even bigger challenge with Slingshot, building a foundational...