Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

Max Albert is the founder and CEO of Adrenaline Interactive, an AI-powered ad tech startup that places brand and product placements directly inside video games like Fortnite and Roblox. In this conversation, Max walks through how a childhood Mario Kart obsession turned into a career, why "what even counts as an impression" is ad tech's hardest unsolved problem, and how landing a campaign with FIFA Heroes became one of the proudest moments of his company's life. He also gets candid about overworking himself after raising venture capital, the leadership shift from "quarterback" to "coach," and the spiritual book that reshaped how he thinks about building something that actually matters.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you're looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

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(00:00) - Intro
(02:05) - Why the video game industry suddenly needs advertisers
(03:01) - A $100 GameStop prize that made him feel richer than Elon Musk
(05:56) - FIFA Heroes and building an NFL game with an actual Browns receiver
(08:07) - What EA and FIFA's breakup proved about games as the real ad channel
(10:59) - What growing past 20 employees taught him about being heard
(14:44) - "Slowing down to speed up," and why direction beats speed
(17:04) - Ad tech's hardest problem: nobody agrees on what counts as an impression
(20:55) - His current growing edge: prioritizing the right feedback
(23:49) - The Zuckerberg line he lives by, and ditching the 12-hour-day myth
(27:23) - Quarterback, coach, general manager — and "I don't pay you to agree with me"
(33:06) - The book that rewired his idea of a good life

• Guest: Max Albert, CEO & Founder of Adrenaline Interactive
• Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-albert-4b0b02a9
• Guest Website: https://www.adrenalineinteractive.ai/

founders, entrepreneurship, ad tech, video game advertising, in-game advertising, product placement, startup leadership, venture capital, founder mental health, gaming industry, AI advertising, brand measurement, EA Sports FC, FIFA, esports, remote teams, startup culture, CEO leadership, work-life balance, founder burnout

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with Adam Spector, a four-time startup founder and active angel investor, now running Chore — a platform combining AI with human operators to manage HR, finance, and compliance for startups. Adam makes the case that founders should never be spending time on back-office admin, using a simple test: would you ever tell Elon Musk to go figure out why Tesla's payroll didn't run? He shares the story of a founder who saved $250 a month doing his own bookkeeping and lost six years of momentum because of it, walks through Naval Ravikant's $2,000-an-hour time heuristic, and gets honest about a recent compensation change that landed with more resistance than he expected. The conversation closes with an unusually deep, mutual exploration of what "good judgment" actually means for a founder, and how it's developed.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters

(00:00) - Intro

(02:09) - Why the founder journey is addictive despite how hard it is

(03:23) - What Chore actually solves: the three core parts of a business

(06:42) - The pie baker analogy: why founders lose the thing they love

(08:06) - Buy Back Your Time and the real cost of doing it yourself

(10:22) - The founder who saved $250 a month and lost six years

(13:23) - Naval Ravikant's $2,000-an-hour heuristic

(14:46) - A big win: profitable since day one, bootstrapped, and 50 people strong

(16:17) - Learning through struggle

(19:46) - Are his workdays actually shorter after four startups?

(21:24) - The biggest challenge: automating the back office without losing the human touch

(23:18) - Evolving as a leader

(24:33) - Investing in yourself

(25:57) - What is "good judgment," actually?  

Links & Resources

• Adam’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamspector2
• Chore Website: https://www.hirechore.com/
• Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell: https://www.amazon.com/Buy-Back-Your-Time-Unstuck/dp/059342297X
  

Keywords

founders, entrepreneurship, back office, HR outsourcing, finance outsourcing, compliance, Chore, Adam Spector, bootstrapped startup, repeat founder, angel investor, buy back your time, time valuation, Naval Ravikant, EOS Traction, E-Myth, compensation and leadership, founder judgment, emotional intelligence, executive coaching, peer groups, Elon Musk analogy, delegation, AI and automation

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

Jeb Dunkelberger is the founder and CEO of Coalition Health Group, an insurance services platform modularizing healthcare functions to make alternative funding accessible to small and mid-sized businesses. After early market demand sparked massive hiring, Jeb faced the painful reality of "startup indigestion"—over-scaling a service team before sales converted. He opens up about executing tough workforce reductions, establishing intentional tension within leadership, and why listening and radical accountability are the ultimate tools for scaling both a business and a life.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you're looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters

(00:00) - Intro
(01:55) - Modularizing insurance for main street employers
(06:40) - Partnering with 18,000 clinical locations
(07:34) - Commercial wins vs. 80% team retention
(09:56) - Startup indigestion and the trap of early hype
(11:40) - The brutal reality of health insurance sales cycles
(16:36) - Conceptual alignment, commitment, contractual
(20:47) - Maintaining team trust through workforce reductions
(26:08) - Building intentional tension in the executive team
(29:07) - Flattening the chain of communication
(32:10) - Stop talking, start listening, serve others

Links & Resources

• Guest: Jeb Dunkelberger, Founder & CEO of Coalition Health Group
• Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jebdunkelberger/
• Guest Website: https://coalitionhealthgroup.com/

Referenced in the episode:

• ClearPoint (subsidiary of Coalition Health Group): https://getclearpoint.com/
• Freakonomics (Book / Podcast): https://freakonomics.com/

Keywords

founders, entrepreneurship, health insurance, Coalition Health Group, self-funding, alternative funding, healthcare startup, sales operations, ICP, startup indigestion, leadership development, workforce reduction, company culture, executive coaching, startup scaling

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with Breanna Hughes, COO and co-founder of Bird & Be, a company providing at-home fertility testing and supplements for men and women, supporting people from trying to conceive through pregnancy, postpartum, and ongoing hormonal health. Breanna built Bird & Be out of her own five-year infertility journey — three rounds of IVF, four embryo transfers, and the anxiety and depression that came with it. Three days before the company launched publicly, she found out she was pregnant. She later conceived a second child spontaneously, without IVF, while taking her own company's supplements. She opens up about launching in Ulta Beauty as an act of destigmatization, a packaging mistake that had customers accidentally taking their partner's supplements, why she rejects the "martyr founder" mindset, and her own decision to start taking a small dose of Prozac to manage postpartum mental health while running the company.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters 

(00:00) - Intro

(02:56) - Why a family doctor often isn't enough for the fertility journey

(05:08) - Why this became personal: 5 years, 3 rounds of IVF, and pregnant 3 days before launch

(08:51) - A big win: launching in Ulta Beauty as an act of destigmatization

(11:43) - The overlooked gap in postpartum care

(20:54) - Riding the dragon: taking care of yourself while building the company

(23:41) - Rejecting the martyrdom mindset

(26:15) - Starting Prozac and what it changed for her as a leader

(31:10) - The packaging mistake: when husbands started taking their wife's supplements

(35:43) - The biggest challenge now: scaling a physical product company

(38:42) - Navigating inventory, cash flow, and the decision to raise capital

Links & Resources

• Breanna’s LinkedIn: https://ca.linkedin.com/in/breannahughes
• Bird&Be: https://birdandbe.com/

Keywords

founders, entrepreneurship, fertility health, reproductive health, Bird & Be, Breanna Hughes, infertility, IVF, at-home fertility testing, postpartum care, maternal mental health, Prozac, founder burnout, martyrdom mindset, product design mistakes, physical product startups, inventory and cash flow, venture capital, Ulta Beauty, destigmatization, women's health, men's health, hormonal health

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with Joy Curth, founder of El Locale, a platform making it easy to shop local. Joy also owns Societe, a brick-and-mortar wellness shop in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and her own brutal experience trying to sell on Amazon — a $100 monthly fee just to exist, a 30% cut of every sale, and her own custom product buried on page 25 of search results — became the spark for El Locale. She opens up about building a fee model that takes 11% instead of Amazon's 30-50%, winning the audience award at Boston Innovation Night, and running a bootstrapped startup almost entirely with the help of 25 remote college interns.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters

(00:00) - Intro

(01:38) - The Amazon story that started it all: page 25 and no buy-now button

(05:40) - Building a fee model that actually works for small businesses

(08:11) - Starting hyper-local: the New Hampshire Seacoast as the pilot market

(09:47) - A big win: the audience award at Boston Innovation Night

(11:04) - Learning to solve problems creatively without corporate resources

(14:05) - Competitors emerging as validation, not threat

(14:35) - The biggest challenge now: helping businesses that aren't online at all

(19:19) - Doing things that don't scale (yet)

(23:19) - Evolving as a leader: teaching 25 remote interns

(27:24) - What has to happen before expanding to a second community

Links & Resources

• Joy’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joycurth
• El Locale: https://ellocale.com/
• Related business, Société: https://societeapothecary.com/
• Paul Graham's "Do Things That Don't Scale" essay: https://www.paulgraham.com/ds.html

Keywords 

founders, entrepreneurship, shop local, local commerce marketplace, El Locale, Joy Curth, Amazon alternative, Etsy alternative, small business platform, New Hampshire, Seacoast, bootstrapped startup, remote interns, fee model, marketplace economics, local economic impact, brick and mortar retail, onboarding challenges, do things that don't scale, first-time founder, corporate to startup transition

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with Arun Krishnaswamy, founder and CEO of Mool AI, an agent factory for the enterprise back office. Arun's background spans Yahoo, Microsoft Research, Visa, and Workday — where his team built the world's first foundation model, three years before ChatGPT. He explains why building an AI prototype is easy but getting it into production is the real bottleneck, how Mool AI takes an agent from four to six months down to two hours, and why he was talking about "orchestration" and token optimization over a year before the rest of the industry caught up. Arun also opens up about the cost of being early, running a partner-dependent business model, and his unusual founder ambition: not just a great exit for himself, but making every employee at Mool AI a millionaire and a future founder.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters 

(00:00) - Intro

(02:10) - Why building an AI prototype is easy, but production is the real problem

(05:55) - Bring us your "lovable project" and we'll harden it into production

(13:05) - Context Forge: reversing the context problem

(13:50) - A big win: agentifying the SaaS ecosystem instead of replacing it

(19:00) - Building a production-ready agent live, in a two-hour customer meeting

(24:37) - Learning through struggle: the risk of partner-dependent growth

(25:44) - Being early: talking about orchestration before anyone else was

(30:28) - How they stayed afloat while ahead of the market

(34:44) - First time being a CEO: from big-team leader to jack of all trades

(38:54) - Investing in himself: cooking, delegation, and building future founders

(44:00) - The goal: make every employee a millionaire

Links & Resources

• Arun’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-krishnaswamy
• MoolAI: https://www.moolai.ai/

Keywords 

founders, entrepreneurship, AI agents, agentic platforms, Mool AI, Arun Krishnaswamy, production-ready AI, LLM orchestration, context engineering, synthetic data, SaaS agentification, enterprise AI, red teaming, prompt injection, AI hallucination, first-time CEO, partner ecosystem risk, being early to market, token optimization, founder legacy, employee equity

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with David McCombie, founder and CEO of McCombie Group, an investment bank and advisory firm that helps mid-market founders build, fund, and sell their businesses. David pushes back hard on "unicorn pressure" — the idea that a startup only succeeds if it becomes a billion-dollar outcome — and explains why some founders walk away from a $50 million exit with little or nothing because of liquidation preferences buried in their cap table. He opens up about a pivotal moment early in his career when he turned down paying work because the client didn't feel like the right fit, and why separating your identity from your business's performance actually makes you a better negotiator, not a worse one.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters 

(00:00) - Intro

(02:36) - What McCombie Group actually does: helping founders build, fund, and sell

(04:30) - Why it's not just "real estate brokering for businesses"

(06:16) - Defining the mid-market: $20M to $200M deals

(08:59) - Unicorn pressure and the myth of the billion-dollar outcome

(12:31) - Liquidation preferences: the hidden booby trap on your cap table

(15:52) - A big win: turning a business with serious gaps into a life-changing exit

(19:16) - Wisdom is failure redeemed: choosing the wrong financial partner

(23:16) - The crucible moment: turning down an assignment he needed

(26:41) - The biggest challenge now: separating fulfillment from net worth

(29:53) - Separating identity from the business's performance

(33:00) - Holding the bat loosely

(36:57) - Courting multiple buyers without needing to sell

Links & Resources 

• David’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidmccombie
• McCombie Group: https://mccombiegroup.com/

Keywords 

founders, entrepreneurship, mergers and acquisitions, M&A, investment banking, mid-market, McCombie Group, David McCombie, exit planning, unicorn pressure, liquidation preferences, venture capital, cap table, founder identity, business partnerships, co-founder fit, McKinsey, separating identity from outcome, negotiation, forced seller, business valuation

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with Ben Gusberg, co-founder and CEO of CAPE, an AI platform built for warm go-to-market — automating referrals, warm intros, and event networking instead of cold outreach. CAPE didn't start as CAPE. It began as a stablecoin infrastructure company that became non-viable almost overnight, just months after raising $4 million. Ben opens up about the most stressful moment of his life, why he refuses to dwell on sunk costs, the viral protest his team staged outside a HubSpot event during NYC Tech Week, and why he believes speed of learning — not background, network, or expertise — is the one thing that actually predicts startup success.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters 

(00:00) - Intro

(01:35) - AI for warm go-to-market: what CAPE actually does

(04:11) - Why in-person trust is resurging as AI floods every other channel

(07:53) - A big win: staging a viral protest outside a HubSpot event

(12:06) - The stablecoin pivot and the most stress he's ever felt

(15:27) - Avoiding the sunk cost fallacy

(18:05) - The biggest challenge now: launching the new product and chasing product-market fit

(21:16) - Revealed preferences vs. stated preferences

(22:59) - Finding the stickiest features in the product

(27:32) - Evolving as a first-time venture-backed founder

(28:50) - Becoming more shameless as a leader

(29:58) - Investing in himself: Saturdays, and staying obsessed

Links & Resources

• Ben’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-gusberg
• CAPE: https://www.joincape.ai/

Keywords 

founders, entrepreneurship, sales technology, go-to-market, warm outreach, referrals, networking, CAPE, Ben Gusberg, stablecoin, crypto pivot, cold email, AI sales tools, product-market fit, behavioral economics, revealed preferences, viral marketing, guerrilla marketing, speed of learning, venture-backed founders, first-time founder, sunk cost fallacy

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with Michael Barnes, repeat founder, investor, and CEO of Viva Benefits, a company that empowers landlords to offer benefits like telehealth, financial wellness, and education support to renters in affordable and workforce housing. Viva now serves 55,000 households nationwide, offering full-household telehealth for as little as $8 a month. Michael opens up about the moment his stress physically broke his body during his first company's hypergrowth (shingles, at 35), the lightning-in-his-veins moment he described to his own daughter, and the systems, coaching, and mental practices he's built to make sure it doesn't happen again.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters

(00:00) - Intro

(02:34) - What Viva Benefits actually does for renters and landlords

(05:33) - Why stabilizing residents stabilizes the whole housing asset

(08:06) - The Kaiser Permanente origin of employer health insurance, and its parallel here

(13:50) - A big win: discovering $8-a-month telehealth

(18:56) - $0 to $200K in 65 days, then shingles at 35

(20:40) - Lightning coursing through his veins

(26:40) - Building an ops manager role to stop things falling through the cracks

(29:18) - Hiring a sales advisor instead of trying to clone himself

(34:37) - The mind palace: staying clear instead of holding onto stress

(36:10) - Investing in leadership: coaching, parenting, and making space to be a dad

Links & Resources

• Michael’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/texbarnes
• Viva Benefits: vivabenefits.com

Keywords 

founders, entrepreneurship, proptech, affordable housing, workforce housing, renter benefits, telehealth, Viva Benefits, Michael Barnes, repeat founder, employee benefits history, Kaiser Permanente, net operating income, real estate investment, founder burnout, physical health and stress, shingles, leadership coaching, mind palace, mindfulness, parenting and leadership, ops manager, delegation

Welcome to Founder Real Talk, 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.

This week, Josh sits down with AJ Goyal, repeat founder and CEO of Fibr AI, the company bringing AI-personalized, real-time responsive websites to marketers, banks, and healthcare companies. Before Fibr AI found its market, AJ built the same product for D2C brands in India and couldn't sell a single unit — even to his own friends. A pivot, a painful comparison to a competitor doing $17 million, and a bet on enterprise banks (against nearly every piece of standard startup advice) eventually turned it around. AJ opens up about why he decided to chase whales instead of minnows, how his leadership style flipped from emotional to cutthroat as the company scaled, and the moment a simple question about his own growth caught him completely off guard.

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This episode was brought to you by Wisdom Partners. If you’re looking for more real conversations, practical resources, and honest founder stories, follow us for upcoming episodes of Founder Real Talk. We invite you to subscribe to our Substack newsletters to receive weekly articles, insights, and resources designed to support founders through every stage of the journey!

Contact us: wisdompartners.llc/contact

Subscribe to our Substack: blog.wisdompartners.llc

Chapters

(00:00) - Intro

(02:28) - What Fibr AI actually does: personalizing websites for humans, bots, and LLMs

(05:20) - Why this problem became personal: the PCOS product that lost customers on a generic page

(09:49) - Fishing for whales instead of minnows

(12:15) - The engineering team that couldn't keep up with the pivot

(14:36) - Surviving an 18-month sales cycle

(19:08) - The India failure: nobody took it, not even his friends

(20:55) - The competitor hitting $17M while AJ was stuck at zero

(25:03) - The biggest challenge now: top of the funnel

(29:02) - The growing edge: being a people's leader without losing the vision

(32:41) - Investing in himself: a six-month-old, a new country, and no time left over 

Links & Resources

• AJ’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankurgoyal22
• Fibr AI: https://fibr.ai/

Keywords

founders, entrepreneurship, AI personalization, website optimization, Fibr AI, AJ Goyal, repeat founder, enterprise sales, whale hunting, ICP discovery, D2C, women's health tech, PCOS, banking clients, 18 month sales cycle, pilot pricing, founder failure, market fit, leadership development, cutthroat leadership, developmental culture, founder burnout, immigrant founder