Best Eclipse Ventures Podcasts (2024)

1
His robotics startup raised $400M, his VC fund over $4B—& he ran both at the same time. Here's how he did it.| Lior Susan, Bright Machines & Eclipse Ventures 42:59

1d ago42:59

42:59

Lior is the Elon Musk of VC. In just 8 years, his venture fund went from 0 to $4B under management. And while doing that, he founded Bright Machines, which to date has raised over $400M. He's both the CEO of Bright Machines and the Managing Director of Eclipse Ventures. And he's not building "easy" software startups either. Bright Machines is looki…

1
VC funding is not popping back. THIS is the new normal—here's how to adjust. | Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta 41:57

1h ago41:57

41:57

Q3 startup data just dropped. We chat with Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta about valuations at pre-seed, seed and Series A. Why the current fundraising environment is the new normal and not about to get much better. We also talk about trends in founder vesting, and why some founders are choosing to vest for longer. Finally, we go through wh…

1
This 1st-time founder raised $4M, kept the team to 5 people—& just raised a $28M Series A. | Parker Gilbert, Co-Founder of Numeric 37:39

4d ago37:39

37:39

Parker quit his job as VP Finance at a late-stage startup in mid 2021. He raised $4M out of the gate because, well, it was 2021. But he didn't ramp up sales, he didn't hire 15 developers. He kept the team to 5 people for the first year. He worked with a dozen design partners until the value prop was perfect. He even refused to let customers pay upf…

1
In 2004, they "almost bankrupted themselves". In 2024, they hit $500M ARR & a $5B valuation. | Mike Wessinger, Co-Founder of PointClickCare 55:13

4d ago55:13

55:13

Mike started selling SaaS before SaaS was a thing. PointClickCare is the Salesforce of healthcare. For the first 7 years, they raised just $600K from friends and family. With that funding, they grew to $50M in ARR. Through that time, they went through the 2000 Dotcom crash and nearly went bankrupt in 2004 as they chased too many markets too soon. S…

1
The top 3 reasons why Zuck is killing Apple in the Mixed Reality race. 11:27

6d ago11:27

11:27

Apple sold only 370,000 VisionPro headsets-- much fewer than it expected. Meanwhile, Meta Ray-Bans are the top-selling product in 60% of Ray-Ban stores. The outcome of their AR/VR products couldn't be more different, even though they both have as much awareness as you could possible buy. There are 3 reasons: 1. Price. 2. Killer feature vs cool prod…

1
His influencer marketplace hit $150M in revenue—& just exited for $500M. It all started with a party at Coachella. | Piotr Tomasik, Co-Founder of Influential 40:49

9d ago40:49

40:49

Piotr met his co-founders at a party in Coachella. He built them an app for influencers to post online. That simple idea evolved into one of the world's first influencer marketplaces. While so many other tried and failed, Piotr and his team targeted marketing agencies with big budgets. They grew to $150M in revenue over a 10 year period. This summe…

1
Your odds of raising a Series A just dropped from 30% to 15%—here's what to do about it: 12:38

13d ago12:38

12:38

New Carta data shows that 30% of seed-stage startups used to raise a Series A within 2 years of their seed. Now, only 15% do. The bar for Series As is as high as it's ever been. And the number of seed extensions that I see is going up as a result. But for founders, this is NOT a bad thing. I remember as a seed-stage founder I was obsessed with rais…

1
His 1st startup failed—but his 2nd one hit $100M ARR & a $1.6B valuation. Here's what he learned. | Liran Zvibel, Founder of WEKA 46:44

22d ago46:44

46:44

Liran quit a cozy job at IBM to launch Fusic, a TikTok-like app back in 2011. He raised over $10M, acquired tens of thousands of users, and failed. So he went back to what he knew: deep tech and enterprise. He launched WEKA in 2013 to improve the efficiency of GPUs. He was operating on hard mode: building deep tech and selling to large enterprise c…

1
He quit Google with no startup idea, raised $50M from Sequoia with no revenue— & grew to 8 figures in ARR. | Dan Lorenc, Founder of Chainguard 31:48

20d ago31:48

31:48

This episode is going to piss you off. Most founders struggle to raise their first few million. Many have to bootstrap for years. Even once there's revenue, many get rejected because they're "too early". Dan had dozens of VCs asking to invest before he even quit his job. He raised his first $5M with no deck, no story, and no product idea. All it to…

1
He founded a banking app for kids 10 years ago, grew to 2M customers & exited—in one of the biggest fintech M&A deals ever. | Dean Brauer, Founder of GoHenry 52:52

1M ago52:52

52:52

It was “really slow in the first couple of years...really, really slow.” GoHenry was an app and debit card for kids to help parents teach their kids about money. Dean started over a decade ago in 2012, when mobile was just truly taking off. And yet, it took multiple years to get off the ground. Once he found the right channels and repeatable growth…

1
1st-time AI founder grows from $0 to $1.3M ARR in 8 months. Here's exactly how he did it. | Jaspar Carmichael-Jack, Founder of Artisan 31:43

1M ago31:43

31:43

Jaspar graduated YC & closed a $11.5M seed round this week. He launched Artisan just 8 months ago. And this is the first venture-backed startup he's ever ran. He started with product-led-growth but struggled. In May, he moved to a sales-first go-to-market & scaled from $200K ARR to $1.3M ARR by September. We go deep and tactical to figure out exact…

1
He launched an Uber competitor with just $3,000—& grew to $20M in revenue in 7 years. | Cody Ruberto, Founder of Uride 40:53

1M ago40:53

40:53

Cody started a ride-share business in 2017 with no capital. He focused exclusively on small towns (population <100K) where Uber/Lyft weren't available. I know as a VC I would've passed if he'd pitched me when he started—and I would've been dead wrong. So far he's raised only $2.1M, compared to Uber's $30B+ raised. And yet, he built a business doing…

1
The ONLY guaranteed way to attract & retain A-players. 11:11

2M ago11:11

11:11

I tried to pay my employees as little as possible. I thought I was being resourceful—& it seemed to work. Until it totally backfired. I learned my lesson the hard way. No founder wants to hire B-level or C-level talent. Everyone is looking for A-players. But most founders don't put in the work. And they end up with B-level teams. If you're serious …

1
He got rejected by 60 VCs, burned all his savings—then grew to $100M ARR & a $2B valuation. | Kyle Hanslovan, Founder of Huntress 58:31

2M ago58:31

58:31

Kyle left his job as a hacker at the NSA to launch Huntress. He bootstrapped for 3 years and burned all his savings. One of his co-founders quit. He got into an accelerator program, but had to sleep in his car for 16 weeks because he couldn't afford a hotel. Finally, 3 years in he'd hit $1.5M ARR. So he pitched 60 VCs for a Series A—and got 60 'no'…

1
Forget Founder Mode— MrBeast Mode is Where it's At. | The top 7 highlights from MrBeast's leaked framework. 13:03

2M ago13:03

13:03

MrBeast's 36-page framework leaked this week. It's how he built a $1B+ company and became the #1 YouTuber in the world. His channel is worth over $1B. For the first time ever, we get to see how MrBeast operates. We go through the 7 most important things that startup founders can learn from MrBeast. From what maniacal obsession looks like, what it m…

1
He took on Uber & grew Rappi to $5B—here’s why the craziest founders often win. | Andres Bilbao, Co-Founder of Rappi 52:56

2M ago52:56

52:56

Andres Bilboa is one of the co-founders of Rappi, the highest-valued app of LATAM ($5B valuation). Now he runs an incubator called Makers and has invested in dozens of startups. In this episode, he shares how Rappi started with no funding and no network. They added restaurants into their platform without permission and gave cash to couriers to buy …

1
How to Get Free PR for Your Startup—Tips from the Editor-in-Chief of Canada’s TechCrunch. | Douglas Soltys, Editor-in-Chief of Betakit 46:37

2M ago46:37

46:37

Douglas has been in media and PR for over two decades. He’s the founder of Betakit Inc and has been running Betakit, Canada’s TechCrunch, for nearly 10 years. He understands what startups need to do to leverage PR, and how PR can help startups hire, fundraise and sell. On this episode, we get tactical and go deep on exactly when it makes sense to u…

1
He built Cohere into a $5.5B AI startup; How to Win in AI; & Why LLMs won't lead to AGI. | Nick Frosst, Co-Founder of Cohere 46:42

2M ago46:42

46:42

In this episode, I sit down with Nick Frosst, Co-Founder of Cohere, the $5.5B AI startup that’s targeting the enterprise landscape. We go through the origin story of Cohere, the challenges of building foundational models, and why he believes large language models (LLMs) won’t lead to artificial general intelligence (AGI). We also explore the fierce…

1
The ONLY guaranteed way to find Product Market Fit 16:08

2M ago16:08

16:08

Even if founders do everything right, they may still fail to find PMF. That's why even repeat founders have only 1.5% chance of building a unicorn. We talk about product-market fit constantly in this podcast. Hopefully, we learn from what others did and improve our chances of finding PMF. But there is only one way to guarantee that one day you will…

1
They hit $100M ARR—in a "crowded market". Here's how they got to $1M ARR in just 18 months. | Don Mal, Co-Founder of Vena Solutions 40:42

2M ago40:42

40:42

Don co-founded Vena & was CEO for 8 years. Last month, Vena became a Centaur crossing $100M in ARR. Don & his team launched Vena in a crowded market, where everyone else was trying to replace excel. So they built a budgeting and planning (FP&A) solution that instead leveraged excel. As Don says, they "disrupted the disruptors". Don knew the problem…

1
This founder was hours from hiring a VP Product—turns out, he was a total fraud. Here’s what he learned. 10:48

2M ago10:48

10:48

It's the first time I see a candidate BS his way through interviews with multiple people, impress each one of them, and ultimately end up being a complete fraud. But the biggest learning wasn't that you should watch out for fraud-- it was that you shouldn't trust interviews nearly as much as you'd think. While fake candidates are rare, candidates w…

1
He quit his cozy Google job & founded not 1 but 2 unicorns— then grew from $1M to $12M ARR in 2 years. | Ashutosh Garg, Founder of Eightfold AI 36:22

3M ago36:22

36:22

Ashutosh is one of those rare founders who founded not just one, but two unicorns. He worked at Google for 4 years, left and started Bloomreach, which was last valued at $2.2B. Halfway through that journey, he left to do it all over again. He started Eightfold AI which is the one we're talking about today. In 2021, he raised $220M from Softbank at …

1
Q2 Early-Stage Venture Report w/ Carta’s Head of Insights: Valuations, Round Sizes, Graduation Rates & more. | Peter Walker, Head of Insights at Carta 40:39

3M ago40:39

40:39

Carta is the backbone of most venture-backed startups. They have access to specific information about every single round, not just what's reported in TechCrunch. Today, Peter Walker, Carta's Head of Insights joins us to share the findings from Carta's Q2 reports. We go deep into data from pre-seed, seed and Series A rounds. We cover median valuatio…

1
He built in stealth with 1 customer for a year—then grew to 1M paid users across 60,000 locations. | Sanish Mondkar, Founder of Legion 42:21

3M ago42:21

42:21

Last quarter, Sanish raised a $50M Series D. His company has raised over $130M. They have enterprise customers across 14 countries including Dollar General, Aldo, and CircleK. It all started because Sanish was working out of coffee shops. He wasn't looking for a startup idea. But after a few casual conversations with employees, he noticed several p…

1
Sean Ellis led growth at Dropbox—& invented growth hacking. Here's his step-by-step growth guide. | Sean Ellis, creator of the PMF test & best-selling author of Hacking Growth. 47:07

3M ago47:07

47:07

Sean Ellis created THE test for PMF. He led growth teams at Dropbox, Eventbrite and LogMeIn, which sold for $4.3B. He coined the term Growth Hacking and wrote the best-selling book Hacking Growth. Today we go deep and tactical with him. He takes us through how to use the Sean Ellis test to perfectly measure and understand product market fit. He tak…

1
He sold AI robots to Walmart & raised $150M. His #1 advice to founders? "Trust your gut." | Daniel Theobald, Founder of Vecna Robotics 38:04

3M ago38:04

38:04

Daniel's been building robots for 20 years. He's sold 100s of AI robots-as-a-service to Walmart, FedEx, & DHL amongst others. Last month, he raised a $40M round. 6 years ago, he realized why robots weren't getting massively adopted. Builders like him were trying to build perfect robots that always worked. But every situation has edge cases. What if…

1
VCs give a lot of advice— & a lot of it sucks. Be careful who you listen to. 7:32

3M ago7:32

7:32

Advice is free—actioning bad advice isn't. Early-stage founders are bombarded with advice. A lot of it from investors who have never operated a business, never ran marketing, never led sales. And yet, many founders take VCs' advice as sacrosanct. And many VCs feel like they can and should opine on everything. If many people treat you like an expert…

1
He took 3 years to make his 1st sale—then grew 1000x to $10M ARR 3 years later. | Alex Hoff, Founder of Auvik 46:34

3M ago46:34

46:34

Alex got the co-founder of a public company to join him and raised $6M out of the gate—but it took him 3 years to make his first sale. But after he shifted from selling to SMBs to selling to MSPs (Managed Service Providers i.e., outsourced IT), things took off: April 2015 - $1K MRR August 2015 - $10K MRR June 2016 - $100K MRR Nov 2018 - $1M MRR ($1…

1
If you wake up with your heart pounding out of your chest— do this. 12:42

3M ago12:42

12:42

When an employee unexpectedly quits, an investor backs out, or a big customer churns— fear of failure takes over. When you close a new round, land a big customer, or make a big hire— you feel pure excitement. Every founder is on a fear-excitement spectrum. There's no way to prevent yourself from feeling the two extremes. But I've seen great founder…

1
He refused to quit his job until $1M ARR—then grew to $5M ARR & closed a $25M Series A. | Pierce Ujjainwalla, Founder of Knak 43:31

4M ago43:31

43:31

Pierce launched a consulting business that grew to millions in revenue and dozens of employees. But he noticed his customers kept asking for the same solution. So he launched Knak, an email marketing and landing page builder that integrates to Marketo. Unlike most founders, he didn’t go all-in. He kept working on his consulting business full-time u…

1
99% of founders SUCK at storytelling. Here's the pro who taught Slack & Salesforce how to do it. | Matthew Dicks, professional storyteller & bestselling author of Storyworthy. 1:17:39

4M ago1:17:39

1:17:39

There is no better storyteller in the world than Matthew Dicks. He tells stories for a living. He gets paid by the world's biggest brands to create stories for them. He's won Moth StorySLAM (a storytelling competition in NYC) a record 59 times. Every founder knows storytelling is a critical skill. But 99% of founders I meet are terrible storyteller…

1
In 2019, he went all-in on AI, grew to $3M ARR in 2 years—then to $85M ARR in 5. | Shubham Mishra, Founder of Pixis 39:26

4M ago39:26

39:26

5 years ago, Shubham had just graduated college and had no network. He bootstrapped to $3M in ARR, then raised $200M & grew to $85M ARR. But he started trying to sell AI for marketing to enterprises with no network. So for 2 months, he'd go to the lobby of a bank and sit there for an hour. He'd wait for the CMO to walk by, just so he could say hi. …

1
How Wiz grew to $500M ARR in 4 years—& could exit to Google for $23B (largest VC-backed exit in history) 11:11

4M ago11:11

11:11

Google is in talks to buy cybersecurity startup Wiz for $23B (a 40x revenue multiple). Wiz is the company that in 2021 announced it grew from $0 to $100M ARR in just 18 months. How did this cybersecurity company grow so fast in a crowded space? How does it get a 40x revenue multiple when FAANG stocks trade at 5-15x? Who are the exceptional founders…

1
He built a farming robot that shoots weeds with lasers— then closed $10M in pre-sales before shipping a single one. | Paul Mikesell, Founder of Carbon Robotics. 58:20

4M ago58:20

58:20

Paul built a startup that was acquired for $2.2B. He worked on AI at Uber and Oculus. But when a farmer told him about some of the problems he was facing, he quit and went all-in on farming. He built a robot that attaches to the back of tractors, uses computer vision to identify weeds and lasers to shoot and kill them. He sells each robot for $1.5M…

1
Tesla’s EV market share (finally) falls below 50%. Good news for founders— incumbents took 15 years to match 1 founder. 6:58

4M ago6:58

6:58

Elon Musk single-handedly took on the entire automotive industry. No one, including me, thought he would succeed. But he's built an $800B company. Whether sales are slowing down misses the mark: the punchline is it took well capitalized, professional automakers 15 years to catch up to a single founder. Sure, Elon Musk is special. But this goes beyo…

1
YC founder raises $3.5M, keeps team to 3 people—then grows 10x to $2M ARR in 1 year. | Benjamin Encz, Founder of Ashby 34:46

4M ago34:46

34:46

Last month, Ashby raised a $30M Series C. Ashby is used by customers like Notion, Ramp and Sequoia. Benji built Ashby as an end-to-end Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that would replace several point solutions. He had to build heads down for 18 months and couldn't launch a simple MVP. Surprisingly, even though he raised $3.5M at seed, he didn't gro…

1
Pickleball grew 3x in 4 years to 14M players. Not by competing with tennis— but by creating a new market instead. 9:01

4M ago9:01

9:01

AI startups don’t necessarily have to beat incumbents. Some will start entirely new markets instead. Like Canva to Photoshop, Shopify to Amazon or Pickleball to Tennis, many of these won’t even have to compete. They create 10x easier to use products and through that open up an entirely new space. They solve problems people didn’t even know they had…

1
He fought Al Qaeda in Iraq, turned down $250K at McKinsey—& built a $150M+ ARR unicorn. Here’s how it happened: | Blake Hall, Founder of ID.me 52:41

4M ago52:41

52:41

"I was technically homeless at the time. I was sleeping on my buddy's couch. I had declined $250,000/ year at McKinsey... I had no idea what I was doing." Now, Blake has $150M in ARR, growing 30% per year, with 80% gross margins. He's raised $400M and his startup ID.me is worth over $1B. This is the story of how pivoted for a Groupon-like model to …

1
Each Google/OpenAI update kills more startups. Here’s how to make sure you're not next. 10:33

5M ago10:33

10:33

Every startup needs to compete with incumbents. But it's different with AI. AI startups need to create websites or apps from scratch and drive traffic. Incumbents can just add AI as a feature. They have distribution built in. AI is not like previous tech revolutions. Unlike mobile, the internet, or the PC revolution, AI is not a new distribution ch…

1
1st-time founder meets 120 VCs— closes $2.7M in 5 weeks, 10x oversubscribed. Here's the step-by-step guide to close a round. | Andrew Rea, Founder of Taxwire 51:53

5M ago51:53

51:53

Andrew spoke with 120+ VCs to raise a $1.5M pre-seed round. He closed $2.7M and had demand for many millions more. He devoted 90% of his time to fundraising, but only took weeks from the first meetings to close. 99% of founders I meet do not fundraise at this level. It takes them longer to close, they have fewer choices and raise less. This is a sp…

1
Zoom hits an all-time low. Here's what AI startups can learn from the WFH hype cycle. 11:13

5M ago11:13

11:13

Zoom was THE work-from-home stock. It's down 90% from peak. The same hype that fuelled work-from-home stocks is now fuelling AI. What happened to Zoom will happen to many AI companies. AI startups today need to carefully position against foundational models and incumbents. Here's how to think through it. Why you should listen: Learn why what happen…

1
He grew to $22M ARR in 4 years—but regrets spending so much on growth. | Chris Walker, Founder of Refine Labs 45:23

5M ago45:23

45:23

Chris shares the story of how he grew Refine Labs to $22M ARR, what he did to grow so fast, and also why he regrets spending so much on growth instead of focusing on profitability. He goes exceptionally deep on sales and marketing and provides tactical advice you can steal. Chris is the founder of Refine Labs & Passetto. He's also a LinkedIn Top Vo…

1
ChatGPT just hit $3B in ARR—here’s why Sam Altman is a strategic genius. 9:42

5M ago9:42

9:42

Sam Altman is playing chess not checkers. He partnered with Microsoft. He partnered with Apple. He grew to $3B in ARR in 2 years. Hate him or love him, he's a strategic genius. You'll recognize a pattern: Sam has an idea, positions correctly, lets the bets play out, and goes all-in on what works. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. In unde…

1
Reddit hit 1M users in 1 year. The key was listening to users—& not doing what they said. | Reddit CTO & Founding Engineer Chris Slowe 52:58

5M ago52:58

52:58

We interview Chris Slow the CTO and Founding Engineer at Reddit. Reddit is now a ~$10B company, with nearly $1B in revenue. Their 1B+ monthly active users are so powerful they can move markets. This is the story of how it all began. On this episode, we interview Chris Slowe, Reddit's current CTO and Founding Engineer. Chris was in YC's first-ever b…

1
She quit her job without a startup idea. Then built a $550M startup from a bad dentist appointment. I Wardah Inam, Founder of Overjet 28:59

5M ago28:59

28:59

Wardah was a PhD graduate working at a biomedical imaging startup. But all it took was two different dentists giving her two totally different diagnoses for her to quit her full-time job. She was unemployed with no idea what to build. All she knew was that something was broken—and she had to fix it. Her startup Overjet is now the #1 dental AI platf…

1
Ex-Squarespace CEO on how to sell to SMBs, build tight feedback loops, & stay close to customers even after raising $200M+ | Dane Atkinson, Founder of Odeko 43:31

6M ago43:31

43:31

Dane was the CEO of Squarespace from 2007 to 2011. He grew the company from ~$2M in revenue to ~$15M. He's a multi-time founder with multiple exits. His current startup, Odeko, raised $227M. He takes us through his long journey as a founder of multiple companies and shares the key startup lessons he's learned. Why you should listen: - Why 7-day tri…

1
He built Uber for parking & exited. Then raised $100M+. Here's his formula for finding product-market fit. | Shmulik Fishman, Founder of Argyle 38:04

6M ago38:04

38:04

His first startup was a cool idea: Uber for Valet Parking. Investors loved it. But the unit economics didn't work out. So he had to pivot. He ended up selling it, but decided to do things differently the second time around. “It’s the boring stuff that makes money. Sometimes the sexy, interesting things are really great ideas, fun to use, but aren’t…

1
COVID nearly bankrupted him. Then with AI he grew from $0 to $25M ARR in 4 years. | Andrew Lockhead, Founder of Stay22 41:24

6M ago41:24

41:24

His travel startup crashed 90% overnight. Here’s how he used AI to grow past $2M/year—to $2M a month: For a while, Andrew was crushing it. Accelerator -> $750K pre-seed -> $2M ARR -> $2.5M seed round. Then COVID hit. He was selling to events like CES, SXSW, etc. Revenue dropped from $160K/month to under $10K... overnight. Investors from his seed ro…

1
He raised $11M off a deck. Here's how he launched Clumio & grew 4x to over 8-figures in ARR. | Poojan Kumar, Founder of Clumio 31:03

6M ago31:03

31:03

Poojan is a multi-time successful founder. He raised $60M for his first startup and exited. He just raised a $75M Series D at his current startup. But it wasn't always easy. - In his first startup, he had to hover beside conference booths for hours to land his first customer. - He gave his product away for free to the first several customers. - It …

1
He quit his cozy Google job & ignored lean startup advice— then grew to $3M in 1 year. | Arvind Jain, Founder of Glean 29:45

7M ago29:45

29:45

Arvind founded 2 billion-dollar startups—by doing everything lean startup tells you not to do. - He didn’t focus on launching an MVP. - He ignored early market feedback. - He didn’t charge beta users anything— for 2 years. And it worked. He went from $0 to $3M in revenue the year he launched publicly. He tripled to about $9M the year after. And tri…

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