Fund/Build/Scale
Walter Thompson
Outreach Signals
Publishing Details
Contact & Outreach
About This Podcast
Podcasting 2.0 Features
Social Media
Explore Statistics
Recent Episodes
S2E99 Before There Is Proof: Build a Startup Story That Shows You Can Execute
A lot of early-stage founders can explain their company five different ways — and all five might be technically correct. The problem is that often, those answers don’t fully line up. That gap in a…
S2E98 How to Hire Your First Offshore Team Without Screwing It Up
Hiring is one of the hardest things for first-time founders to get right, especially if you’re building a distributed team that spans the globe. For this episode, I spoke to Isaac Saul Kassab,…
S2E97 How Technical Founders Win the First 5 Minutes With Investors
Technical founders don’t usually struggle with what they’re building. They struggle with explaining it clearly, quickly, and in a way that makes someone want to invest. In this episode, I spoke with…
S2E96 Don’t Wait for the IPO: How Tech Employees Actually Get Liquid
Startup employees are encouraged to believe in the mission. But IPO timelines now stretch well past a decade — and many never happen at all. In this episode, Ben Black, co-founder and managing…
S2E95 Turning Utility Into Habit: Beyond Basic Gamification
I interviewed Play Ventures General Partner Phylicia Koh to explore what founders outside of gaming can learn from two decades of game design. Play Ventures began as a gaming-focused VC fund. Today,…
S2E94 The Day You Raise Money Is the Day You Stop Focusing on Technology
In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Sentry co-founder David Cramer joins host Walter Thompson for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about what founders actually struggle with — and why so much…
S2E93 Selling Unproven AI to Skeptical Enterprise Buyers
Building an early-stage startup isn’t just about the technology — it’s about earning trust before the proof exists. In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I’m joined by Jeff Smith, CEO and co-founder…
S2E92 From Seed to Growth: What African Founders Need to Know
As African startups mature, the leap from seed to growth brings a new set of challenges — longer fundraising cycles, institutional expectations, governance, and the realities of scaling across…
S2E91 What Investors Actually Look For in the First 18 Months
In this episode, I’m joined by Jon Callaghan, co-founder and managing partner at True Ventures, and Julie Bornstein — CEO and co-founder of Daydream, founder of The Yes, and former COO of Stitch Fix…
S2E90 Is the Defensible Moat a Myth in AI?
For years, founders have been told to build a defensible moat. But in AI, where platforms, models, and capabilities can shift overnight, that advice is starting to feel outdated. In this episode of…
S2E89 Building Against Giants: Turning Insider Expertise into a Startup Advantage
When most founders look at markets dominated by Google or Apple, they see a dead end. Ariel Seidman saw an opening. Before founding Hivemapper, Ariel helped scale Yahoo Maps during a period when…
S2E88 From Scarcity to Scale: Building Startups in Latin America’s Earliest Stages
Odille Sánchez leads the Tech and Scientific-Based Entrepreneurship Center of Excellence at Tecnológico de Monterrey, where she works with hundreds of early-stage founders across Latin America. In…
S2E87 Why Black Startup Founders Have to Play a Different Game
When you don’t have generational wealth or a built-in network, the startup path isn’t just harder — it’s different. In this episode, I’m joined by James Norman and Sean Green of Black Operator…
S2E86 Building an Enterprise AI Startup from Day Zero
Lexi Reese has scaled companies at every stage — from building Google’s programmatic advertising business, to helping Gusto grow revenue from $10M to $300M. Now she’s co-founder and CEO of Lanai, an…
S2E85 Building in Layers: The Compound Startup Playbook
April co-founder and CEO Ben Borodach joins Fund/Build/Scale to break down how he built a compound startup in one of the hardest markets in fintech: U.S. taxes. We talk about why some problems can’t…
S2E84 How to Build in a Market That Won’t Let You In
In most industries, if you’ve got a solid idea, a few engineers, and a working prototype, you can at least get in the game. Professional sports is not one of those industries. When Jordy Leiser…
S2E83 How to Prove You’re Building a Venture-Scale Company
Most founders think VCs want a pitch deck full of market numbers, a roadmap, and a feel-good story about the future. Hoxton Ventures Partner Payton Dobbs isn’t looking for any of that. He wants to…
S2E82 The "Marionette Threat" of Generative AI with All Tech is Human’s David Polgar
Today’s episode is something a little different. I’m doing a feed swap with Humans of AI, a podcast from the team at Writer. What you’re about to hear is their conversation with David Ryan Polgar,…
S2E81 Cyan Banister & Cristian Cibils Bernardes: Early Signals, Founder-Investor Fit, and Trustworthy Consumer AI
Recorded live in San Francisco during TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 week, this Fund/Build/Scale session brings together Cyan Banister (Long Journey Ventures) and Cristian Cibils Bernardes (Autograph) for a…
S2E80 From Engineer to CEO: Ryan Wang on Building Assembled and Finding Product-Market Fit
I interviewed Ryan Wang, co-founder and CEO of Assembled, in his San Francisco office to unpack how he turned lessons from Stripe into a fast-growing startup that powers customer support teams at…
Frequently Asked Questions
Fund/Build/Scale has published 113 episodes since December 2023, covering topics in News, Tech News.
Fund/Build/Scale is currently highly active with new episodes weekly. Average episode length is 42m.
Sign up on Grep.FM to access contact details for Fund/Build/Scale, including email and social media links.
Similar Podcasts
Pivot
New York Magazine
781 episodes
Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast
MKBHD
358 episodes
Grumpy Old Geeks
Jason DeFillippo & Brian Schulmeister with Dave Bittner
754 episodes
The Vergecast
The Verge
1,008 episodes
TechStuff
iHeartPodcasts
2,584 episodes
Apple Bitz XL w/ Brian Tong
Big IP | Realm
381 episodes