Castuner

Founder Real Talk

Wisdom Partners

A podcast for founders, by founders. We explore the real journey of building and growing a company. Each episode, we go beyond the highlight reel to unpack the strategies, decisions, and hard lessons that shaped successful businesses, revealing the good, the bad, and the ugly behind the growth.

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Episodes

78 episodes

  1. Why 1 in 1,000 Ad Clicks Isn't Enough: Austin Goldman on Bet-the-Company Decisions | Ep. 78 35:40
  2. He Thought He Might Lose His Family’s Money. Then He Found a Way — Jimmy Speyer | Ep. 77 44:43
  3. Colleges Measure Career Readiness All Wrong — Eric Elwer on Building SteppingStone | Ep. 76 37:21
  4. FRT LIVE! The Real Story of Scaling AI | Ep. 75 1:13:23
  5. Your Chocolate and Beer Are Polluting the Water — Ben Slotnick on Lillianah Technologies | Ep. 74 37:37
  6. His Startup Almost Died the First Yar. Morgan Moncada on Neru Health | Ep. 73 43:03
  7. Why 99% of Founder News Is Bad News (And How to Survive It) with Malur Narayan | Ep. 72 38:00
  8. Google, Amazon, Microsoft — Now Startup #4. David Aronchick on Building Expanso | Ep. 71 33:57
  9. How a Hurricane Forced Shane Parreco to Rebuild Aktiga | Ep. 70 49:14
  10. He Expected 75 Clients in Year One. He Got 9. — Rich Benci on Building Omega Benefits | Ep. 69 36:40
  11. Why One Hacker Now Does the Work of an Entire Team with Brett Ewing | Ep. 68 41:35
  12. Giving People Who Have No Voice a Voice — Maheen Adamson on Building Soof Solutions | Ep. 67 40:36
  13. Putting Ads Inside Fortnite: How a $100 GameStop Prize Turned Into an AI Ad-Tech Startup | Ep. 66 37:22
  14. Your Time Is Worth $2,000 an Hour — Adam Spector on Building Chore | Ep. 65 40:26
  15. Why Over-Hiring Nearly Killed His Startup with Jeb Dunkelberger | Ep. 64 39:24
  16. "Martyrdom Doesn't Help Anyone." — Breanna Hughes on Building Bird & Be Without Burning Out | Ep. 63 42:11
  17. 11% Instead of 30-50%: Joy Curth on Building a Fairer Marketplace for Small Business | Ep. 62 33:12
  18. Anyone Can Vibe Code a Prototype. That's Not the Hard Part. — Arun Krishnaswamy on Mool AI | Ep. 61 45:44
  19. Our Most Limited Resource Is Energy — David McCombie on M&A and Founder Wisdom | Ep. 60 38:46
  20. He Staged a Protest Outside a HubSpot Event. It Went Viral — Ben Gusberg on Building CAPE | Ep. 59 32:16
  21. From $0 to $200K in 65 Days. Then His Body Broke Down. — Michael Barnes on Viva Benefits | Ep. 58 40:44
  22. From Emotional Leader to Cutthroat CEO — AJ Goyal on the Cost of Scaling Fibr AI | Ep. 57 35:49
  23. She Fired Herself From Marketing Her Own Marketing Company — Dana Marxer on AyeQ | Ep. 56 37:44
  24. He Used His Own Company to Save His Father's Life — Ardy Arianpour on Seqster | Ep. 55 40:30
  25. He Opened a Meditation App and His Worst Thoughts Showed Up. — Yash Ghanekar on Moksha | Ep. 54 28:52
  26. He Asked for a Free Tour. He Left as CEO — Dan Koukol on Building Digit | Ep. 53 30:08
  27. Fundraising Is Fundamentally Broken. Jeff Fidelman Is Fixing the Incentives. | Ep. 52 37:26
  28. I Wage War on the Word "Fail" — Justin Abrams on Building Cause of a Kind | Ep. 51 35:41
  29. 50 Episodes In — What We Have Learned From 49 Founder Stories | Ep. 50 23:01
  30. He Reallocated $2 Billion Away From Fossil Fuels in Year One — Scott Ryan on Investature | Ep. 49 26:14
  31. Fundraising. Sales. Hiring. — Kirill Lopatin on Building xAID | Ep. 48 25:43
  32. First Assumption Was Wrong. The Revenue Followed the Pivot. — Aspen Buckingham on Overture | Ep. 47 34:29
  33. He Went Through a Divorce. Then He Built the Product He Wished He'd Had: Hans Guntren | Ep. 46 30:21
  34. "Riches Are in the Niches": JR Butler on the Lesson That Reshaped Shift Group | Ep. 45 37:18
  35. 100% of Zero Is Still Zero — Cosimo Spera on Building Minerva CQ | Ep. 44 31:27
  36. Someone Snored During My First Pitch — Daphne Pariser on Building Heron AI 33:23
  37. Downsized 80% at Peak Revenue — Amodhi Weeresinghe on Rebuilding Coura 38:57
  38. Quantum Computer Will Break Bitcoin — David Pollak on Building Spice Labs 39:18
  39. Manage Your Board or It Will Manage You: Abhi Yadav's First-Time CEO Lesson 36:00
  40. Stop Pitching. Start Listening. James O'Connor on Customer Discovery Done Right 31:40
  41. From Lawyer to AI Founder: Amanda Lukoff on Winning the ASU GSV Global AI Challenge 38:56
  42. Chewing Glass and Looking Into the Abyss — Jose Bulatau on Building Venueconex Solo 33:41
  43. Building the Airlock for AI — Stephen Calhoun on SASI 32:30
  44. Building The First Continuous Hormone Monitor for Women — Jenny Duan & Abhinav Agarwal 29:17
  45. 5 Startups, 1 Success, Still Building — Ali Ahmed on RoboMart 30:53
  46. 60 No's Before a "Maybe": Chelsie Hall on Building Viral Moment 28:47
  47. "Time Kills All Deals" — Jonathan Festejo on Modernizing B2B Sales 35:11
  48. The Misaligned Incentive Behind Every Dating App with Eric McHugh 29:42
  49. From 9/11 Tragedy to Building AI Marketing with Harjiv Singh 26:29
  50. Transforming Alcohol Addiction Treatment with Jonathan Hunt-Glassman 33:39