Blog
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Hrishi Amravatkar, Mighto AI — Voice Is the New Interface for AI
Twenty years at eBay, Cisco, Nokia and Amazon — where he headed Alexa's conversational AI team — and now a solo founder whose voice agents call contractors, gather quotes and book site visits for property managers.
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Alexander Piskunov — Don’t Start a Company to Sell It
From investment banking and private equity to importing wine into the UK, an exit to a European family office, and two venture funds — on why no founder in their right mind starts something just to sell it.
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Elizabeth Greenfield — Everything Is Feedback
25 years as a nurse, 15 of them as a nurse anesthetist — then she walked away from a job she loved to build her own functional medicine practice, and had to learn how to run a business from scratch.
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Shiven Dave, ConscioussAI — An AI Agent That Runs Your Phone
A bedroom project built to read wind tunnel data became a 12-person startup shipping a mobile agent that drives your whole phone — demoed live from an Apple Watch.
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Saeed Amidi, Plug and Play — Pressure Is the Prerequisite
From losing 99.9% of the family wealth in 90 days to a $1B "day job" and ~100 startup investments a year — on pressure, and why he won't back a founder with a plan B.
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Mykyta Tretynko, Billioncore — Stopping Fraudsters and Chargebacks
Fighting fraud and chargebacks from Ukraine — the founder journey, and what it actually takes to build a startup from there.
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Airbnb for Data Centers — Handoyo, Founder & CEO of Lyrid
Lyrid's CEO on building an "Airbnb for data centers" that undercuts AWS by up to 60% and helps founders stretch their runway.
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The WILD Accelerator, with Natalia Bishop
Turning a scrappy accelerator for overlooked founders into a scalable, self-sustaining product powered by an AI coach named Willa.
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Tom Shen — Entrepreneurship Is in the Heart
A serial fintech founder on humility, culture, and delight — why the dumbest person in the room wins and delighted customers pay full price.
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AI Gives Answers. Businesses Need Better Questions.
After 30 years in enterprise tech, Benjamin Baer builds a "decision intelligence" community — and argues AI's real edge is asking better questions.
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The Real Goal of a Startup: Get to "Default Alive"
Veteran operator Wayne Fenton on surviving to "default alive" — customer discovery, the four-times-better rule, and why every startup gate is a cliff.
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Raymond Cheng, Decrypt Compliance — When to Launch a Startup
Leaving EY, Salesforce and Tencent to bootstrap a compliance firm — on getting comfortable with ambiguity and knowing your customer before you build.
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Sameer Saran, ParkStash — Bootstrapping a Startup
A bootstrapped founder on why revenue beats fundraising, obsessing over customers, and surviving COVID's zero-revenue days.
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Eli Finn & Edgar Ceron — The San Jose Startup Ecosystem
Two ecosystem leaders on community, advisors versus mentors, and the non-dilutive government grants that quietly help early-stage founders win.
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Sol Lipman and PieFi on the Inspiring Founders Podcast
A serial founder on how cheap AI-era building lets you validate products in-market before raising a dollar — and why community beats incubators.
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Discussing Community with Eli Finn, SJSU SpartUp Incubator
SJSU SpartUp's Eli Finn on a live-in summer incubator where peer community, honest feedback, and networking beat formal lectures.