Venturing with Vishesh — Startup Founder Interviews on SaaS, AI, Fundraising & Venture Capital.

I'm joined by Justin Robbins — he spent years studying why the best employees go silent, and his answer is that it's never a people problem. It's always a design problem. He's the founder of Metric Sherpa and author of More Than a Motto. ## Episode Summary Most leaders believe quiet quitting is a people problem — a failure of attitude, motivation, or grit. Justin Robbins argues it&...

# The Marketing Industry Solved Measurement. It Was Always the Wrong Problem.## Guest IntroductionI'm joined by Peter Grafe, Founder at BlueAlpha, the AI-native marketing hub built for performance marketing. A first-cohort data science graduate who turned down nothing to keep a Tesla internship, he spent four years building the measurement infrastructure that proved Tesla's paid media actu...

I am joined today by Will Bodewes, founder and CEO at Phonely. Phonely uses AI to answer business phone calls so naturally that nine out of ten callers can't tell it's not human. They just raised sixteen million, and one of their customers replaced three hundred and fifty agents in a single month. Key Discussion Points: 🔥 How a $7 idea on a pizza box turned into a $16M Series A funding ro...

Arnau Ayerbe left JP Morgan at 23 to build Throxy — an outbound company that ignores LinkedIn completely and sells into manufacturing, logistics, and construction using AI agents and human cold-callers. They just raised 6.2 million from Base10 after going through YC. Today we're getting into the contrarian bets, the co-founder dynamics of building with your best friend since age 14, and why he...

My next guest, Krishna Namasivayam, is working on what he calls "Synthetic Human as a Service." After leading AI at Dropbox and Meta, he’s now building with the radical belief that we should simulate human behavior before we ship code, product, messaging, or anything really. In this episode, we break down his contrarian thinking on product, AI, hiring, and what it takes to launch in a gr...

Episode 61 with Sara-Louise Ackrill FRSA, Founding CEO at Wired Differently. My next guest is a therapist-turned-founder, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and author of The ND Lovers Club. She runs Wired Differently — a 32-person company where 85% of the team is neurodivergent. We talked about founders who are building from exile, why psychological safety isn't a luxury that disappears und...

Today's guest watched digital transformation projects fail for years. Not because the tech was broken — the governance was. The values had drifted. And nobody noticed until it was too late. So he did something unusual. He went back 2,000 years to Tamil philosophy — specifically a tradition called Saiva Siddhanta — and built a framework that treats ethics not as a compliance checkbox, but as th...

This episode is about what happens when you win — and still feel lost. My guest Sama went from hospital clown to cybersecurity founder to a successful exit. And on this episode we get into the stuff nobody talks about after an acquisition — the identity crisis, the scars, the 'now what.' We also unpack his clown mindset framework — this idea that failure is success — why he's now build...

Episode 58 with Vikram Das, Co-Founder & CEO at Yasu. I'm joined by Vikram Das, the Co-Founder & CEO of Yasu. Vikram spent two decades in the industry with stints at Cognizant, and AWS. He went from closing 50 million dollar cloud deals for AWS to walking into a room of 70 strangers in Amsterdam to find a Dutch co-founder he'd known for weeks, and they recently raised a little over...

I'm joined by Ryan Kalisky, Co-Founder and CEO of WareMatch, a platform connecting suppliers and 3PL vendors globally. As a 26-year-old McGill finance grad, Ryan is trying to disrupt an unglamorous $1 plus trillion logistics industry. We explore the honest reality of early-stage marketplace building, the hacks they’ve used so far, and more. I am always excited to talk to marketplace founders,...

I'm joined by Saher Shodhan, founder of Thera Travel, a startup that's disrupting the healthcare industry by providing patients with access to affordable and high-quality medical care abroad. With a background in marketing and growth, Saher has leveraged AI tools to drive growth and reduce marketing costs by 10x. In this conversation, we dive deep into the challenges of building a successf...

I'm joined by Scott Persinger, Co-founder and CTO of BizTrip AI, a company focused on utilizing AI technology to enhance corporate travel management. With a background in software development and a passion for innovation, Scott has led BizTrip AI from its inception to become a leader in the AI-powered travel industry. In this conversation, we dive deep into the challenges of integrating AI int...

I'm joined by Brian Leor Frankel, Growth Consultant at Ignite. Consulting, with a background in market research and over 20 years of experience in B2B campaigns. With a passion for teaching and helping startups scale, Brian brings a unique perspective on customer acquisition cost optimization and marketing strategy. Optimizing customer acquisition costs is crucial for startups and entrepreneur...

David Abaev is the founder of Databar.ai; a powerful, plug-and-play data enrichment platform built for lean GTM teams. In this episode, we unpack how David is building a category-defining product in the shadow of VC-backed behemoths, his playbook for partnerships and product prioritization, and what founders get wrong about GTM data, AI agents, and scraping. From a rough AppSumo launch to scaling...

I'm joined by Bradley Jones, the Founder & CEO of ThatRound, a pioneering investment platform in the UK. With a background in mathematics and experience in the financial sector, Bradley has a unique understanding of the challenges and opportunities in early-stage investments. In this conversation, we explore how ThatRound is disrupting traditional early-stage investments in the UK, the loo...

Episode 51 with Santosh Sharan, Co-Founder & CEO at ZeerAI.I'm joined by Santosh Sharan, Co-Founder & CEO of ZeerAI, a pioneer in AI-driven go-to-market strategies. With a background in engineering and a passion for innovation, Santosh has led ZeerAI from its early days to a successful SaaS company. In this conversation, we dive deep into the challenges of building a successful SaaS busine...

I'm joined by Gautam Rishi, the Co-Founder & CEO of OneShot.ai, a pioneering AI-powered sales development platform. With a background in tech and a passion for innovation, Gautam has led OneShot from its early days to a successful company that's changing the face of sales development. In this conversation, we dive deep into the challenges of sales development in the AI era and explore...

I'm joined by Ananya Grover, Founder of HealCycle, a Labouisse Fellow, and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Antler. With a background in public health and a passion for women's health, Ananya has dedicated her career to developing innovative solutions for women's health and wellness. This episode explores the intersection of hormonal and mental health, discussing the importance of emotiona...

I'm joined by Jasmine Bonder, the Chief Executive Officer of Clinova. Solutions, a healthcare technology company that's revolutionizing patient care. With a background as an ICU nurse practitioner, Jasmine brings a unique perspective to the intersection of healthcare and entrepreneurship. This episode explores the intersection of healthcare and entrepreneurship, highlighting the importance...

I'm joined by Will Betteridge, the Founder and CEO of Fair, a pioneering auto warranty company that has achieved $2M ARR. With a background in creative pursuits, Will has brought a unique perspective to the tech world, leveraging his experiences at Uber Eats and TikTok to drive growth and innovation at Fair. From humble beginnings in hospital parking lots to achieving $2M ARR, Will Betteridge...

I'm joined by Kat Wendelstadt, Growth Angel at Ada Ventures, a seasoned expert in go-to-market strategies and customer engagement. With a background in big tech and a passion for startup growth, Kat has helped numerous companies refine their messaging and scale their marketing efforts. She's also a thought leader in the space, frequently sharing her insights on the importance of empathy an...

I’m joined today by Peter Cooper. He has spent 25+ years leading security transformations across high-stakes industries like fintech, banking, and critical infrastructure. From scaling global teams at Adyen to navigating compliance across IPOs and banking licenses, Peter now helps early-stage and growth companies build pragmatic, trust-first security. This episode explores what founders can learn...

In this episode, I’m joined by Liam Collins — founder of Proxis (YC S24), your enterprise AI sales email autopilot. Liam’s built AI agents that behave like 24/7 interns, scaling cold email personalization and follow-ups without burning out your sales team. But Proxis wasn’t born overnight. From prior auth in healthcare to devtools for model distillation, Liam's founder journey is packed with p...

I'm joined by Alex M H Smith, Founder of Basic Arts, with a background in developing innovative business strategies and a passion for helping entrepreneurs succeed. Most startups are strategically bankrupt, meaning they lack a clear strategy, leading to generic and undifferentiated businesses. To succeed, founders need to develop a strategic hypothesis and create a differentiated choice. This...

Episode 42, I'm joined by Griffin Parry, the Founder and CEO of m3ter, a billing infrastructure company that helps software businesses drive revenue growth through usage-based pricing. This episode explores the transformative journey of a successful entrepreneur who exited his business to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and shares valuable insights on building a successful startup, navigating the ch...