My guest today is Julian Rowlands, founder of Cashboard, an AI-powered analytics platform built for finance teams. Julian does not have the traditional tech background, growing up the son of a writer and studying history in college before becoming a serial CFO.

Julian got into finance after graduating college during the Great Recession. He applied for 100 jobs and got one interview, which resulted in a job offer, making the decision for him. Cashboard started as a pandemic side project. After a year spent validating the idea and talking to CFO's about their pain points, Julian had enough conviction to leave his job and focus on Cashboard full time

In today's episode, we talk about:

• Cashboard's mission to invent 'the solo CFO' by utilizing AI in financial analytics

• focusing on addressing real problems with practical solutions

• successful go to market strategies

• the role of AI in financial data

Where to find Julian:

• LinkedIn

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: sell before you build - if you can't sell your product, people likely don't love it

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: having agency and autonomy - Marc Benioff comes to mind as someone that's been able to build a successful company and stay in the drivers seat

• how do you recharge: socializing with friends and playing sports like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: travelling to meet customers in person

Ask or Offer

• ask: please connect on linkedin to talk about finance (mention that FoundersTable sent you)

Referenced

• Cashboard

Amy Yan is the co-founder of Nowadays, an AI-powered event planning platform. She and her sister launched the startup, leveraging their shared experience in organizing large-scale events as college student body presidents. Prior to founding Nowadays, Amy worked at McKinsey as well as tech giants like Google and Meta.

In today's episode, we discuss:

• Getting a role as a Boba Barista during the pandemic

• Origin story of Nowadays

• The competitive landscape of event planning

• Go-to-market strategies, conferences, and alumni networks

• Setting boundaries when working with family

Where to find Amy:

• LinkedIn

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: startups are an emotional rollercoaster. avoid comparing yourselves with others and focus on your own progress

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: for products, its simplifying event planning and reducing stress. for the team, its building a vibrant company culture that supports personal development and growth

• how do you recharge: spend time outdoors, especially with her pets (a puppy named Rue and a kitten named Tigger). this includes activities like hiking and kayaking as well as dance

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: started regular physical therapy due to back issues affecting sleep

Ask or Offer

• ask: spread the word about nowadays

• offer: 50% discount on Nowadays services to all listeners - contact Amy via LinkedIn and mention Founder's Table to redeem the offer

Referenced

• Nowadays

Martin Mao is the founder of Chronosphere, a modern observability platform focused on cloud native architecture and fine grained control of observability data. Mao tried his hand at founding various startups during his college years, including an Australian facebook competitor, before joining big tech and working at companies like Microsoft, AWS, and Uber. At Uber, Mao was the manager of its in house observability team which developed M3, an open source prometheus compatible metrics backend. This is the same backend that powers Chronosphere.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• early years building an Australian facebook competitor

• skipping seed and raising a series A with an 80-page business plan

• the challenges of cloud native architectures: more data, more cost, more issues

• understanding actual market needs vs theoretical projections

• thoughts on AI in observability

Where to find Martin:

• LinkedIn

• Twitter

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: Understand your motivations and leverage the founder community for support.

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: humble founders who recognize the role of luck and don’t claim their approach is the only way. Successful companies are those where former employees look back with pride and joy about their time there

• how do you recharge:

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact:

Ask or Offer

• ask: Introduction to talented individuals, especially those looking to join a tech company on the go-to-market side or technical side.

• offer: If you’re dealing with observability cost or effectiveness problems, Martin would love to chat, although no specific offers like a discount or coupon are provided.

Referenced

• Chronosphere

• M3

Aakash Shah is the founder of Wyndly, a startup that helps people permanently fix their allergies from home. Aakash came up with the idea as a result of suffering from allergies during covid19 lockdowns when cooped up at home with his family cats. This led him to co-found Wyndly with his cousin, Dr. Manan Shah, in 2020 as well as go through Y Combinator as part of the W21 batch. Before Wyndly, Aakash worked on growth across a number of startups.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• how wyndly provides a permanent fix for allergies through allergy immunotherapy

• why traditional immunotherapy doesn't work for patients

• benefits and challenges of working with family

• scaling people and processes

• dual challenges of building in healthcare and the consumer market

• leveraging AI to do more with a small team

Where to find Aakash:

• LinkedIn

• Website

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: avoid distractions and focus on iterating quickly and shorter sprint cycles

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: doing things that energize you, controlling your time, and building something meaningful with a motivated team

• how do you recharge: maintain an identity beyond that of a founder and have hobbies outside of work

Ask or Offer

• ask: partner with providers to treat your patient's allergies

• offer: discounted test kits for listeners who have severe allergies

Referenced

• Wyndly

Aakash Shah is the founder of Wyndly, a startup that helps people permanently fix their allergies from home. Aakash came up with the idea as a result of suffering from allergies during covid19 lockdowns when cooped up at home with his family cats. This led him to co-found Wyndly with his cousin, Dr. Manan Shah, in 2020 as well as go through Y Combinator as part of the W21 batch. Before Wyndly, Aakash worked on growth across a number of startups.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• how wyndly provides a permanent fix for allergies through allergy immunotherapy

• why traditional immunotherapy doesn't work for patients

• benefits and challenges of working with family

• scaling people and processes

• dual challenges of building in healthcare and the consumer market

• leveraging AI to do more with a small team

Where to find Aakash:

• LinkedIn

• Website

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: avoid distractions and focus on iterating quickly and shorter sprint cycles

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: doing things that energize you, controlling your time, and building something meaningful with a motivated team

• how do you recharge: maintain an identity beyond that of a founder and have hobbies outside of work

Ask or Offer

• ask: partner with providers to treat your patient's allergies

• offer: discounted test kits for listeners who have severe allergies

Referenced

• Wyndly

Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, an observability platform that helps teams solve problems faster within their distributed services. Before co-founding Honeycomb, Charity made significant contributions at companies like Linden Labs (creators of Second Life), Parse, and Meta. She has co-authored books including "Database Reliability Engineering" and "Observability Engineering" and is a frequent speaker at tech conferences. Charity is active on social media and is known for her advocacy of "observability 2.0", "testing in production", and thoughts on hiring and and career advancement.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• Charity's preference single malt scotch

• the honeycomb origin story and Charity's initial reluctance to start a company despite investor interest

• Observability 2.0: what is it, why now, and why it matters

• the tragedy of high cardinality metric pricing

• advice on overcoming the fear of public speaking and the career advantages of building a public profile.

• focusing on communication skills and cultural fit when hiring

• creating truly diverse teams that go beyond race or gender to build a collaborative and resilient culture

• thoughts on organizational hierarchy and how that has changed over time

• why it's important to have the business come first

Where to find Charity:

• Website

• LinkedIn

• Twitter

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: life isn't fair - the path to success is different for everyone. health should comes first and you need to prioritize personal well-being for long term success.

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: instead of thinking of people as higher or lower, everyone is a peer. in the context of business, success wil come from proving that strong morals and good culture can coexist with business success

Ask or Offer

• ask: for anyone that doesn't use Honeycomb and would be open to discuss their reasons, please reach out (via LinkedIn)

• offer: 50% discount for 3 months when using honeycomb. use the code HNYCAST50 to redeem

Referenced

• Honeycomb

• The Cost Crisis in Observability Tooling

• Transforming to an Engineering Culture of Curiosity With a Modern Observability 2.0 Solution

• Observations on the Enterprise of Hiring

Jake is one of the co-founder of Crew, an AI-powered platform that recruits, vets & pays your team globally. Prior to Crew, Jake worked as a PM at microsoft and an ESPN commentator while attending college at Dartmouth.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• lessons from doing ESPN broadcasting and focusing on "yes and"

• getting into YC with the condition that they come up with a new idea

• initial pivot and importance of validating ideas with sales instead of LOIs

• moving into hr tech and building automated vetting system with AI

• high touch go to market

Where to find Jake:

• LinkedIn

• X

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: entrepreneurship is an emotional rollercoaster, find coping mechanism for highs and lows. also find a way to enjoy the ride rather than solely focus on achieving an exit

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: people like Brian Chesky (AirBnb) that are happy and fufilled by their work

• how do you recharge: prioritize outdoor activities and staying active

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: investing in new hockey equipment and joining a league

Ask or Offer

• ask: Check out crew if you're looking to grow your team

• offer: Jake is moving to San Francisco and open to meeting and networking with fellow entrepreneurs and potential customers

If you're interested in contacting Jake, reach out at offers@founderstable.co with the episode title in the subject and details of your request in the subject!

Referenced

• Crew

Max Cho is the founder of Coverage Cat, a one stop shop to buy insurance for high net worth individuals. Prior to Coverage Cat, Max worked extensively in tech and finance at firms like Microsoft, Two Sigma, and Google. Max is passionate about fixing the problems in the insurance industry and believes that most people buy the wrong policies, overpaying for what they do get, and get policies that don't cover what they need

In today's episode, we talk about:

• a bottom ups approach to picking an undergraduate degree

• personal issues with insurance as a teenager and the motivation to start Coverage Cat

• coverage cat's core mission and what sets it apart

• the inefficiencies of the insurance industry

• tradeoffs with running a remote team

• AI's impact on insurance

• thoughts about the Y Combinator experience

• a values driven approach to business

Where to find Max:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxrcho

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: plan for what could ruin your company (eg. failing to hire the right people)

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: leaving the world better in small ways than when we've entered it

• how do you recharge: occasionally from runs, mostly from helping customers achieve better outcomes

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: mostly experience buyer's remorse of buying too many things

Ask or Offer

• ask: individuals with more than $100k net work seeking better insurance should check out Coverage Cat

Referenced

• Coverage Cat

Cory O'Daniel is the CEO and co-founder of Massdriver, a cloud platform and visual development environment. Massdriver aims to simplify cloud infrastructure management and DevOps processes, allowing engineering teams to focus on building products rather than managing complex cloud setups. Prior to Massdriver, Cory spent over a decade working on backend, cloud, and platform - Massdriver started out as an internal tool he build to help automate much of that work.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• where to find the best taco's in Los Angeles

• recurring frustrations with ops and cloud that led to the start of Massdriver

• creating a platform for both engineers and operation teams using a diagram interface backed by infrastructure as code

• why devops is bulls**t

• facilitating platform engineering through better tooling

• pivot from pure service play to professional services

Where to find Cory:

• X

• LinkedIn

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: prioritize automation and simplicity. choose boring tech. don't just take VC advice on face value and don't be afraid to push back

• offer: Attend Massdriver’s weekly webinars for practical insights on cloud and DevOps topics, and suggest new topics you’re interested in learning about.

Ask or Offer

• ask: Check out the Platform Engineering Podcast if you're a developer founder in the dev tools or cloud space and want to discuss problems and customer solutions.

Referenced

• TACO

• Infrastructure as Code

• Devops is Bullshit

• Platform Engineering Podcast

• MassDriver

• OpenTofu

Artem Bugara is the founder of NewsCatcher, a service that helps organizations programmatically retrieve structured data from news articles. Prior to Newscatcher, Artem worked as a data engineer at elseco, a company that specializes in insurance underwriting for high technology risks within the aviation, energy, and space sectors. Artem left elseco to go full time on his side project which eventually turned into NewsCatcher.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• origin story of newscatcher

• applying and going through both TinySeed and YC and the difference in philosophy of these respective accelerators

• newscatcher's core value add

• finding product market fit with enterprise sales and high annual contract values (ACV)

• importance of understanding and qualifying leads

• lessons learned from talking to customers

Where to find Artem:

• LinkedIn

• Email: artem@newscatcherapi.com

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: talk to your customers and avoid building features based on assumptions

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: stripe and airbnb - stripe's founders for their willingness to do the work themselves to help customers setup stripe as well as their ability to charge more than paypal, their main competitor at the time. airbnb for caring deeply about their customer needs

• how do you recharge: spend time with wife and dog

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: writing and preparing ahead of time for meetings & buying an iphone max with bigger screen and battery life

Ask or Offer

Please email artem with the subject “Founders Table” in the subject to reply to ask or offer

• ask: newscatcher is hiring for multiple roles. looking for remote workers in non-us time zones

• offer: free access to NewsCatcher for researchers and NGOs for academic and non-profit projects.

Referenced

• NewsCatcher

• TinySeed

• Y Combinator

Amrutha Gujjar is the founder of Structured, a startup focused on simplifying data integration and analytics for growth teams. Prior to structured, Amrutha interned at Meta, Microsoft, and Google before deciding to join Meta full time. She left Meta to directly work with end users and because of the possibility brought about by AI.

In today's episode, we talk about:

• how Structured helps growth teams by providing a unified view of key metrics across different tools and functions

• the challenge of convincing startups of the importance of data hygiene

• revenue operations, what it is and why you should consider doing it from the get go

• understanding the business context for what you are delivering

• white glove onboarding and doing things that don't scale

• Structured's use of AI to automate data mappings and data integrations

Where to find Amrutha:

• LinkedIn

• Twitter

• Email: amrutha@structuredlabs.io

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: don't give up. the journey is long - tackle problems one at a time.

• when you think of success, who or what comes to mind: learning from other people's experiences

• how do you recharge: spending time with friends and family

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: listening to Lenny's podcast

Ask or Offer

Design partnership with customers that want early access to what we're building. Email Amrutha with “founderstable offer” in the subject.

Referenced

• Structured

• Lenny's Podcast

Noah Palansky is the founder of Taiv, a digital signage solution that uses AI to automatically switch between cable and custom streaming channels. Taiv is used in restaurants and other venues to serve custom ads and content during commercial breaks. Prior to Taiv, Noah worked marketing at a software company and started a foundation to help kids affected by cancer after losing his own mom to a rare form of cancer as a teenager. In today's episode, we talk about:

• Noah's aha moment for Taiv while watching a hockey game in a bar

• challenges of building a hardware and software startup

• door to door sales and getting the first customer

• expanding operations to multiple cities

• fundraising and keeping the lights on during covid

• finding cofounders with help from the spouse

• current and future milestones

Where to find Noah

• linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noahpalansky/

• email: hello@taiv.tv

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: be prepared to work on startup for the long run - most "overnight success" comes after 10 years of work

• when you think of success, who comes to mind: Bill and Melinda Gates for making a big philanthropic impact in the world

• how do you recharge: do things that make me so uncomfortable that I can't think about work - building a deck from scratch, racing in negative 40 degrees Celsius, etc

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: getting better at prioritizing important things and intentionally letting other tasks fall through the cracks

• ask: currently launching new product, TaivX, to make it easy to add physical world advertising to your product with two lines of code - if this fits your use case, please reach out to Noah

• offer:

  • If you have a product and want to reach people in bars or restaurants, get 50% off your first campaign by mentioning "Founders Table" in the email

  • If you know a restaurant or bar that would be interested in partnering with Taiv, tell Noah and get an awesome swag bag worth $200

Referenced

• Taiv

Agni Bhattacharya is the founder of Alma, a gamified mobile banking app where people can win $1M every Wednesday. Prior to Alma, Agni was product lead at Meta, Zynga, and a late stage fintech startup. During Covid, Agni created a mobile game which he scaled to over 1M users before selling the IP to a gaming studio. In our conversation, we discuss:

• Exploring wildly different career paths before deciding to become a PM

• Leveraging facebook ad data to understand user demographics of competitors

• Scaling a mobile game to 1M users worldwide and selling the IP

• The YC application process

• The origin of Alma and GTM

• The advantage of working in regulated spaces

• The importance of just getting started

Where to find Agni Bhattacharya:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/agnib/.

Closing Questions

• advice to current founders: If you're thinking of starting a company, don't get stuck with analysis paralysis. Focus on getting something that delights people into the hands of users and everything else will just kind of fall into place.

• when you think of success, who comes to mind? Mahatma Gandhi for being a contrarian thinker and using ahimsa and non-violent protest to achieve Indian independence

• how do you recharge? Athletics and playing sports. Spending time with dog and girlfriend. Playing video games competitively.

• any recent small investment that has had an outsized impact: CHanging diet and cutting down on red meat and junk food

Referenced:

• User Interviews | The User Research Recruiting Platform for Teams

Daniela Miao is one of the founders of Momento, an enterprise ready real-time data platform. Momento makes it easy for engineers to add distributed caching and real time pub sub with just a few lines of code. Prior to Momento, Daniela was a tech lead at AWS DynamoDB and the Director of Platform Engineering at Lightstep.

In our conversation, we discuss:

• Thought process behind leaving big tech to work at a startup

• Team First Approach of building a startup

• Pivoting from B2C (consumer fitness) to B2B (infra)

• Getting initial big name design partners

• Momento's globally distributed team

• Becoming a new parent while running a startup

Closing Questions:

- advice to current startup founders: Understand the financials of your business and focus on gross margins

- when you think of success, who comes to mind: No particular individual - more focuses on self-growth and becoming a better version of myself

- how do you recharge: exercise and social gatherings

- any recent small investment in the last year that has had an outsized impact: regular exercise

Offer: Friends & Family discount if you want to try out Momento's service. Forward requests with use case and details to offers@founderstable.co to be connected!

Where to find Daniela:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielamiao/

If you want to feature your own startup, reach out to kevin@founderstable.co with a blurb on why you’d be a good fit.

Referenced:

• Momento

• Lightstep

• DynamoDB

• Caching