Build Mode

On Build Mode, TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield Editor Isabelle Johannessen cuts through the startup mythology to uncover how founders survive the brutal early days, navigate impossible funding landscapes, and somehow keep their companies — and sanity—  intact. Each season, Isabelle is joined by founders, investors, and operators to dig into specific aspects of the startup journey, from creative go to market strategies to founder mental health. The interviews are full of candid startup wisdom—think cap table drama, co-founder breakups, and pivot panic. So, if you’re starting a company or or even just thinking about it, this is your survival guide.  

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126
The academic to founder pipeline with Dr. Stacy...
On today’s episode, Becca and Dom chat with Dr. Stacy Blain, the co-founder and chief science officer at Concarlo Therapeutics. Blain talked about how she had been researching how to cure drug-resistant cancers before she accidentally found her way into entrepreneurship after her academic grants started getting denied. She also talked about why scientists make great founders and how the importance of the company’s mission is not lost on her
45 min
127
Digital Nomads need insurance too with Sarah Sa...
This week, Becca and Dom are joined by Sarah Sandnes, the co-founder and CTO of SafetyWing, which is creating a global safety net for remote workers. Sandnes is a digital nomad herself, so she understands the frustrations of frequently crossing borders and how difficult it can be to find affordable and high-quality health insurance as an employee. She also talked about how she and her co-founders have built a fully remote company that spans almost the entire globe -- because even digital nomads deal with time-zone frustrations.
40 min
128
Motherhood, mentorship, and management with Kam...
This week Becca and Dom are joined by Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, the co-founder and CEO at Samooha, a startup creating the infrastructure needed for data collaboration. Kamakshi talked about what it is like being a repeat founder in a male-dominated technical field. She talked about juggling being a parent and a company leader and how she thinks being a mother makes her a better entrepreneur. Plus, she talked about what may be the wildest startup acquisition story we’ve heard yet.
42 min
129
Boxed wine can be bougie with Allison Luvera an...
Exciting news this week! Dominic-Madori Davis is joining Becca Szkutak as Found’s newest co-host. Say hi to her in a review or tweet us @found. In this week’s episode, we are talking with the co-founders who are reimagining boxed wine. Boxed wine hasn’t typically been thought of as aesthetically pleasing or particularly delicious, but Juliet co-founders Allison Luvera and Lauren De Niro Pipher, are on a mission to change that. According to the co-founders, glass bottles serve nothing but tradition and are a sustainability nightmare. So they dove into rebranding boxed wine with their elevated design and carefully selected profiles.
46 min
130
Filling in the learning disability assessment g...
Getting diagnosed with a learning disability or attention disorder is crucial to getting students the support they need to be successful in the classroom, however, the assessments are extremely cost and time prohibitive. This week on Found Darrell and Becca are talking with Stefan Bauer about how Marker Learning is cutting the cost of learning disability assessments by conducting them remotely, how they’ve successfully worked with school districts to help them test their required amount of students, and the potential to take Marker Learning into the prison system to assess incarcerated people and provide them with tools to learn in a way that’s better suited to their abilities. We also say goodbye to Darrell as a regular host of Found this week, but don’t worry you can still catch him every Friday on The TechCrunch Podcast!
44 min
131
Found Live: Shifting from founder to VC with Ru...
We’re coming at you live from TechCrunch’s Early Stage in Boston. Darrell and Becca are joined onstage by Russ Wilcox who founded E Ink and is currently a partner at Pillar VC. They discussed how Russ navigated multiple economic downturns and eventually sold E Ink to Amazon, why he made the change from Founder to VC, and how he can usually tell within the first two minutes of a meeting if he will invest.
31 min
132
Curing disease with CRISPR with Trevor Martin f...
Welcome back to Found, the TechCrunch podcast where you hear the stories behind the startups from the entrepreneurs themselves. In this week’s episode, Trevor Martin co-founder of Mammoth Biosciences comes on to discuss how the company is using CRISPR systems to detect and cure genetic diseases. He talks with Darrell and Becca about using the importance of transparency when creating innovative medical technology, using CRISPR to build therapies that will help patients in the real world, and what funding looks like for a company that has a long road to profitability.
44 min
133
Found is nominated for a Webby
We’re thrilled to be nominated for a Webby award in the Best Technology Podcast category. You can help Found win by voting atvote.webbyawards.com. Voting closes April 20.
0 min
134
Rebranding egg donation with Lauren Makler from...
On today’s episode, Lauren Markler comes on to talk about how her company Cofertility aims to rebrand egg donation by making the process less transactional and much more affordable. She talks with Darrell and Becca about scaling while maintaining a personal touch, building a company remotely, fand inding cofounders that align on the company mission and prioritizing motherhood while building a company.
46 min
135
Getting people to try new things IRL with Sarah...
This week Becca is joined by special guest co-host TechCrunch reporter Amanda Silberling to talk with Sarah Peterson, COO and co-founder of The Nudge which is a text-based app that helps you make the best plan in your city. They get into the benefits of a sibling/co-founder relations, how to build trust with a user, and why everyone needs that planner friend in the friend group.
46 min
136
Building Generative AI before it was cool with ...
This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Angela Hoover, CEO and co-founder of Andi, a generative AI search chatbox company. Angela and our hosts talk about building in generative AI before Chat GPT made it cool, how she went from working in construction to starting an artificial intelligence company, and how the Andi team plans to use the momentum in the AI space to reach their next goals.
40 min
137
Making more mammoths with Ben Lamm from Colossal
Ben Lamm is no stranger to starting an interesting company but Colossal Biosciences, the world’s first de-extinction company is definitely the most sci-fi startup we’ve seen yet. This week on Found he talks with Darrell and Becca about what it means to bring back the infamous Wholly Mammoth, knowingly dumb Dodo, Australian massacred Thylacine; and what this means for conservation, how they secured VC funding despite being a long way away from profitability, and why they structure the company like a typical SaaS startup.
49 min
138
How Gen Z builds community with Teddy Solomon f...
Welcome back to Found, the TechCrunch podcast where you hear the stories behind the startups from the entrepreneurs themselves. This week we’re talking to Teddy Solomon, the co-founder of Fizz, a social media app aimed at college students focusing on building community on campus. For this interview, we’re joined by TechCrunch social media expert, Amanda Silberling. Darrell, Amanda, and Teddy discuss what Gen Z is looking for in their social media, how to thoroughly moderate the platform, and how this kind of community building could go far beyond colleges.
41 min
139
Talking trash with Matt Roger from Mill
While working on developing the iPhone and then going on to co-found Nest, Matt Rogers became an expert in changing consumer behavior on a mass scale by creating products that seamlessly fit into everyday life. In his newest venture, he’s turned his sights to solving food waste starting in the kitchen. Mill sends customers a trash can that dries and shrinks kitchen scraps so they can be sent back to be used for animal feed. In this episode, Matt, Darrell, and Becca talk about thinking through every part of the customer experience from packaging to sending back their food waste, why he prefers starting a company to investing in one, and what decisions he thinks defined his previous companies.
45 min
140
Bonus Episode: Say Hello to the Startup Battlef...
It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s next for their company and get insight from TechCrunch staff, VCs, and audience members on why they were the right choice. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
32 min
141
Augmenting creativity with Alice Albrecht from ...
Last year when we talked to Alice Albrecht from Re:collect, the Found team couldn't stop thinking about the possibilities of a tool like Re:collect, so we're sharing this episode again. Re:collect is a software tool that augments creativity by helping people focus, recall, and connects their ideas. The conversation covered a lot of ground from how to hone your pitch when your product is so cerebral, how technology can help creativity but Alice argues will never replace it, and how developing AI requires building safeguards from the jump.
58 min
142
Bonus Episode: Getting to know the Battlefield 200
Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode three. It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for—the winner is announced! In this episode, we get to know the winner of the 2022 Startup Battlefield competition. We’ll hear what’s next for their company and get insight from TechCrunch staff, VCs, and audience members on why they were the right choice. New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
14 min
143
Modernizing 911 calls with Michael Chime from F...
Michael Chime, the co-founder and CEO of Prepared, is leading the charge to modernize 911 calls by providing access to video and photos. Most people are calling in emergencies with their smartphones so the Prepared team is working to help dispatchers have all the data possible to relay to first responders. In today’s episode, they talk about implementing this new tech in an industry that’s slow to innovate, navigating privacy concerns when capturing and collecting videos of emergencies, and how he’s grown into the CEO role as the company has expanded.
53 min
144
Bonus Episode: Making the Pitch Perfect
Inside Startup Battlefield is back in our feed with episode two. In the second episode of Inside Startup Battlefield, we take a trip to TechCrunch Disrupt 2022 to hear pitches from the top five companies: Aaron Hall from Intropic Materials, Elizabeth Lawler from App Map, Chad Mason from Advanced Ionics, Sheeba Dawood from Minerva Lithium, Tim Lichti from Swap Robotics. We get to know the companies and the unique problems they’re solving through their pitches and the judges’ follow-up questions. Plus we hear from our host and Battlefield Editor, Neesha Tambe, about what working with each company was like. New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
31 min
145
Turning waste water into water that works with ...
This week on Found, Darrell and Becca talk with  Alex Rappaport, the CEO and co-founder of ZwitterCo, which makes it practical for industries to recycle water and enhance product recovery with new filtration technology. Water scarcity is a looming issue that often gets overlooked in sustainability conversations. However, Alex has been heartened by his conversation with companies and investors by the nearly ubiquitous interest in investing in water-treatment solutions. In this episode, they get into how Alex has led with ESG messaging to investors and how his angel investors help set ZwitterCo up for successful rounds down the line.
50 min
146
Bonus Episode: The Startup Battlefield Basics
Check out the newest podcast from the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Inside Startup Battlefield, the four-part series that takes you behind TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield competition. In this episode, our host and Startup Battlefield Editor Neesha Tambe breaks down how the Battlefield companies are selected for the TechCrunch Disrupt stage. Then we take a deep dive into what makes a pitch perfect with pitch coach and TechCrunch writer Haje Jan Kamps and Startup Battlefield judge and VC Nisha Dua. You’ll also hear from: Julia Somerdin from Labby, Young-Jae Kim and Tara Peters from Anthill, Quddus Pativada from Digest AI, Blessing Adesiyan from Mother honestly, Hikari Senju from Omneky, Mitch Tolson from Ally robotics, Elizabeth Lawler from App map, Aaron Hall from Intropic materials. Sheeba Dawood from Minerva. New episodes of Inside Startup Battlefield drop every Monday. Be sure to check out all of the other podcasts in the TechCrunch Podcast Network: Found, Equity, The TechCrunch Podcast, Chain Reaction and The TechCrunch Live Podcast.
31 min
147
Disrupting beauty's last frontier with Keta Bur...
This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Ourside founder and CEO Keta Burke-Williams. They get into what it takes to innovate in a historically luxury industry, the challenges of raising capital as a Balck female solo founder with a consumer startup and, most importantly, how many solid colognes Darrell travels with.
49 min
148
Avoiding the pitfalls of OnlyFans with Rosie Ng...
Rosie Nguyen (or JasmineRiceGirl as her fans know her) is the co-founder and CCO of PG-13ish content-creating platform Fanhouse. In this episode, Rosie talks with Darrell and Becca about her sometimes-scary experiences creating content on Twitch and OnlyFans that inspired the Fanhouse founding team to build a safer place for creators to monetize their content, how having a creator as a co-founder helped with their fundraising process, and how she balances being a first-time founder with building her community.
48 min
149
Being the steady hand in market uncertainty wit...
This week Darrell and Becca are joined by Klarna’s Co-founder and CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski to talk about how the company is expanding beyond by now pay later space to become a neobank. Sebastian walks us through his European startup journey, breaking into the US market, how the importance of calm leadership through a market downturn, and what’s next for Klarna.
46 min
150
Modernizing the live music industry with Mir Hw...
Mir Hwang is the co-founder and CEO of GigFinesse. Mir talks about how his struggles to book music gigs as a teenager pushed him to launch the company that connects artists with venues for live shows. Mir also talked about how hard it was to steer the live music-focused business through the pandemic in an industry that was reticent to adopt tech to begin with. Plus, we learn about a fun venue that couldn't be more perfect for Darrell's future poetry residence.
50 min