Exponential Scale

S1E35 More Startups, Fewer Jobs — Interview with Donna Harris, CEO, Builders + Backers

Startup job creation peaked at 7.9 jobs per 1,000 people in 1997. Today it's 5.3 — a 33% decline — even as startup formation hits record highs. Donna Harris, CEO of Builders + Backers and six-time…

S1E34 Why Founders Get Stuck at $1M–$5M ARR (And How to Get Unstuck) — Interview with Asia Orangio, Founder, DemandMaven

Nine out of ten SaaS founders are pulling the wrong growth lever — and Asia Orangio, Founder of DemandMaven and former Moz board member, explains why most companies stuck at $1M–$5M ARR are…

S1E33 Free Flow - Ditch VC: Interview with Ron Wiener, Founder & CEO, Venture Mechanics

Less than 1% of startups that raise venture capital ever return money to investors. Ron Wiener, a 10-time founder with a $32M single-company raise, a 25-year investor, and the mind behind the "Free…

S1E32 Should Small Teams Raise Money, And How: Interview with Miko Matsumura, Managing Partner, gumi Cryptos Capital

Miko Matsumura, a venture capitalist who built neural networks at Yale in 1990 explains why a 5x return is life-changing for a founder but a rounding error for a VC fund. Miko is a Managing Partner…

S1E31 1,500 Blog Posts, Zero Ad Spend: Making Experts Dangerous with AI — Interview with Chris Lema, Builder / Writer / Coach

Chris Lema wrote 1,500+ blog posts on chrislema.com and generated 120,000–150,000 monthly visitors without spending a single dollar on ads. In this episode, the 25-year tech veteran and Builder /…

S1E30 Stay in the Game Long Enough to Build an 8 Figure Business: Interview with Max Kang, Co-Founder & CEO, Cupkin

Eight figures in revenue and a team of just a few people. No VC, no senior hires, and the founder only learned to read a P&L three months ago.Max Kang is the co-founder and CEO of Cupkin, a…

S1E29 $9M ARR, 110 to 55 People, and a Platform Rebuild — Interview with Kyle Racki, Co-founder & CEO, Proposify

What happens when you grow from 3 people to 110 people and then back to 55 people? All the while growing mostly bootstrapped with a bit of funding?Kyle Racki is the co-founder and CEO of Proposify, a…

S1E28 Get Out of Your Own Head: $500M From Watching, Not Asking: Interview with Alex Hillman, Co-founder, Stacking the Bricks

Alex Hillman is the co-founder of Stacking the Bricks and Indy Hall, one of the world's first coworking spaces, founded in Philadelphia in 2006. Together with Amy Hoy, he created the 30x500 course,…

S1E27 Million-Dollar Solo-Founder Hardware Product: Interview with Scott Heimendinger, Founder & CEO, Seattle Ultrasonics

For 5 years, a solo founder developed a category-creating hardware product in stealth — then launched a $399 ultrasonic knife at CES 2026 with just $2 million in pre-seed funding.Scott Heimendinger…

S1E26 $6M+ ARR with All Agents and 1 Employee - Interview with Ben Broca, Founder of Polsia

One person. $5.6M in annual recurring revenue. Nearly five thousand businesses running autonomously — while he sleeps. That's not a future-state thought experiment. That's Ben Broca's company right…

S1E25 The Chill Work Manifesto — Interview with Rand Fishkin, Co-founder & CEO of SparkToro

Rand Fishkin raised $29M in VC at Moz, watched it grow to 200+ employees — and then deliberately built his next company to run on 2.5 people. SparkToro now serves 65,000+ marketers. He's…

S1E26 Interview with Ben Broca, Founder of Polsia

S1E24 The Book That Replaced the Sales Team: Interview with Gia Laudi, Customer-Led

A 4-person team with no sales department counts Bitly, Sprout Social, and dbt Labs as clients, because a book replaced the sales motion entirely.Gia Laudi is the co-founder and principal of…

S1E23 No-Code as Leverage — Interview with Emmanuel Straschnov, CEO & Co-Founder of Bubble

Emmanuel Straschnov bootstrapped Bubble for seven years without a dollar of outside capital. No VC clock. No forced growth. Just two founders building the infrastructure to give anyone — regardless…

S1E22 Stop Broadcasting, Start Focusing - Interview with Brennan Dunn, CEO & Founder, RightMessage

Most email marketing "personalization" is a first-name merge field and a hope. Brennan Dunn built something different: a behavioral system that segments, routes, and converts without a marketing team…

S1E21 Community as the Unfair Advantage: Interview with Gina Bianchini, Founder & CEO of Mighty Networks

Gina Bianchini built Ning with Marc Andreessen. 100 million users. 300,000 social networks. Sold for $150 million. Most founders would have called it a career.She went back and did it again.Mighty…

S1E20 Scaling the Creator Economy: Interview with Tyler Denk, CEO, Beehiiv

Tyler Denk joined Morning Brew as employee #2. A single newsletter send earned $4,000. By 3 million subscribers, that same send earned $80,000 — from the same amount of editorial work. No new hires.…

S1E19 Activity vs Impact: The Busy Trap

Activity vs Impact: The Busy TrapAre you running a business or just running in circles? 🏃‍♂️ In this episode, host Ron Schmelzer exposes the "Activity Trap": the dangerous habit of confusing hours…

S1E18 Leverage-First Organizations: Antidote to Unicorn Dreams and Small Business Limits

Most founders think they’re choosing between two paths:Small business. Or venture-backed chaos.That’s a false choice.This episode breaks down the rise of the Leverage-First Organizations, and…

S1E17 $6.5M and About A Dozen People: Interview with DatoCMS

$6.5M ARR With Around a Dozen People: How DatoCMS Scales Without HiringWhat if scaling didn’t mean more people, more meetings, or more chaos?In this episode of the Exponential Scale Podcast, we sit…