Satellites scan the Earth thousands of times every day, powering AI, defence, and disaster response. But there’s a critical problem that not many people know about, but that our modern world is hindered by.In this episode of Founders & Builders, I sit down with Michael Stanway and Joe Griffiths, founders of The Compression Company, who are solving one of the hardest problems in modern infrastructure: how to move massive amounts of satellite and sensor data efficiently.We cover:- The biggest opportunities in space tech right now- Their experience moving to San Francisco as first-time founders- The “watermelon through a straw” problem of satellite data- How they raised a $3.4M round in 10 daysChapters:00:00 - Intro01:40 - The biggest problem in space and Satellite technology06:10 - How we use satellite data every day 11:46 - Entrepreneur First: Finding your co-founder14:54 - The Residency: Live & work with other founders in San Francisco18:58 - Raising $3.4M in 10 days (how they did it)21:23 - Building a compression factory for all data types31:07 - Founder wisdom: Focus ONLY on solving the most important problem38:37 - The Compression Company are hiring (reach out to them)Topics covered:Satellite data • Space tech • Data compression • AI infrastructure • Defence tech • Climate monitoring • Startup fundraising • Deep tech👉 Subscribe for weekly conversations with founders building the infrastructure behind the next generation of technology.

If you’re thinking about starting a business in 2026, or you’ve had an idea sitting in the back of your mind that you haven’t acted on yet... this video is for you.Over the last six months, I’ve interviewed 30 founders and investors on the Founders & Builders podcast. Collectively, the companies they’ve built are worth over $110 billion... and after analysing those conversations, one clear pattern kept coming up.Every successful startup goes through the same five steps, and none of it is magic. You can totally do it too.In this episode, I’ll walk you through that playbook so you can see exactly where you are, and what actually matters at each stage:Chapters:00:00 - Why NOW is the time to start your business01:51 - Step 1: Finding your startup idea & co-founder06:30 - Step 2: Raising investment (and whether you should)09:34 - Step 3: Winning your first customers15:24 - Step 4: Scaling your company (adding fuel on the fire)19:41 - Step 5: Mastering your founder mindset23:09 - What's coming up in 2026Everything you’ll hear comes directly from founders who’ve built real companies, including the people behind Google Maps, Weights & Biases, Harvey AI, and investors from CRV, Hoxton Ventures, and B Capital.If you’ve ever felt late, behind, or unsure whether now is the right time — you’re not alone. And chances are, you’re probably earlier than you think.Don’t forget to subscribe 🔔 And after you've finished watching the video, get back to building ;)#startup #founder #venturecapital #technology #entrepreneur

Henrik Djurestal is the founder of Vorker.ai - a deep AI coworker built specifically for the smallest businesses: one to ten-person teams who need leverage, not headcount.

Fresh off raising a €700,000 pre-seed round, Henrik breaks down why deep AI agents will transform small business operations, and why the next entrepreneurial wave won’t be no-code, it will be AI co-workers running entire workflows end-to-end.

From automating admin and outreach to drafting contracts, generating designs and handling integrations across thousands of tools, Vorker is building the future of how tiny teams operate. Henrik also shares candid lessons from raising as a solo founder, the challenges of selling a horizontal AI product, and why traction beats pitch decks every time.

CHAPTERS:

00:18 – Introducing Vorker.ai and the €700k Pre-Seed Round

00:57 – What Vorker.ai Actually Does for 1–10 Person Businesses

01:39 – How Deep AI Agents Work Inside Vorker

02:26 – Using Off-the-Shelf Models vs Training Your Own

03:25 – The Future of AI Co-Workers for Small Businesses

05:14 – Real Tasks Vorker Can Automate Across a Business

06:50 – Hiring the Team and the Vorker “Secret Code” Challenge

09:06 – Lessons from Fundraising as a Solo Founder

11:29 – What Comes Next: Closed Beta, Open Beta and Seed Plans

A huge thank you to Henrik for joining us live at Slush - a brilliant conversation with a founder building in one of the most explosive new categories in AI.

#foundersandbuilders #henrikdjurestal #vorkerai #aicoworkers #startups #slush

Sam Sihvonen is the CEO of Solu - a precision genomics platform helping hospitals and institutions detect, prevent and control infections before they spread.What began as a diagnostics-focused tool has rapidly expanded across major verticals from food safety and agriculture to pharma, industrial bio and research. Sam and the team believe Solu can become a company that reshapes how we identify and stop infectious threats in the real world.From the economics of drug development, to the global risk of antibiotic resistance, Sam explains why the world urgently needs better tools - and why Solu is already making a measurable impact.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:12 Big verticals in genomics01:42 Why this could become a massive company02:25 The Slush talk with Enveda03:10 Why biotech execution is so hard04:05 Why no $1T biotech exists (yet)04:50 Drug development timelines + costs05:32 The antibiotic crisis06:21 What success looks like for Solu08:02 Early customers + real-world usage08:45 Advice to early-stage founders09:18 Raising the ceiling on your ambition10:02 How Slush drives bigger thinkingHuge thanks to Sam for making the time!#foundersandbuilders #samsihvonen #solu

Lars Rasmussen went from being a broke founder after the dot-com crash to co-founding Google Maps, one of the most important products on the modern internet.

Today, billions of people use Google Maps every day without thinking twice.In this episode,

Lars shares:

• How Google Maps accidentally went viral before launch and nearly overwhelmed Google’s infrastructure

• Why speed, not features, was the real unlock that changed everything• How a failed VC raise directly led to selling the company to Google

• What it was like building on the web before smartphones, APIs or modern tooling

• Why founders today have more leverage than ever, yet still feel late

• His shift from builder to ecosystem builder and why he’s now creating Panathenea, a major founder conference in Athens

Chapters:

01:30 - The Google Maps Story

07:36 - Larry Page Discussion

08:46 - How Widely Google Maps is Used

11:15 - Growth Challenges

15:28 - 10 Millions Users on Day One!

16:29 - Panathenea

28:00 - Advice To Young Founders

⭐ Listener Suggestion Of The Week – Canvahttps://www.canva.com/

👍 Why subscribe?If you build companies, invest in startups, or care about technology shaping the future, this channel is for you.

🔔 Subscribe and turn notifications on so you never miss an episode.

#GoogleMaps #LarsRasmussen #Startups #Founders #TechHistory #Entrepreneurship

Ali Parsa is the CEO of Quadrivia - an AI company creating real-time clinical agents that automate 20 to 30 percent of a clinician’s workload. The goal is simple: reduce the global shortage of medical expertise by turning routine, repetitive clinical tasks into safe, regulated AI services.Ali’s mission is shaped by decades of building at the frontier of healthcare. Before Quadrivia, he founded CIRCLE (now the UK’s largest hospital group) and Babylon, which served millions of patients globally and pioneered AI triage and digital-first care.A huge thank you to Ali for joining us at Slush - this was an honest & deeply inspiring discussion about the future of AI in global health.Chapters:00:18 – What Quadrivia Does Explained Simply01:23 – The Fundamental Problem in Global Healthcare02:33 – Building Safe, Real-Time Clinical AI04:27 – From Circle to Babylon to Quadrivia06:13 – Lessons From Failure and Europe’s Founder Culture08:00 – Ali’s Story: Becoming a Refugee at Sixteen09:41 – How Ali Uses AI and the Future of Clinical Agents11:17 – Reflections, Resilience and Advice to His Younger Self#quadrivia #aliparsa

James Green went from a small industrial town in Redditch to becoming a General Partner at CRV, one of the oldest and most respected venture funds in the world.In this special episode filmed in San Francisco, we unpack the real story behind how he got there - and the philosophy that’s shaped the founders he backs.James doesn’t care about pedigrees. He cares about scrappiness, conviction and people who do exactly what they say they’ll do.James has built a career on backing the underdog – the founders everyone else underestimates.Chapters:(00:00) Venture Capitalists and Cyber Security(10:26) Future Challenges in Cyber Security(18:56) Early Startup Experience and Transition(25:40) The Power of Cold Emailing(30:50) Insightful Insights on Startup Investing(40:17) Venture Capital and Company Scaling(48:33) Optimizing Startup Funding Processes(57:18) San Francisco Tech Culture Insights(01:04:07) Life Lessons and Urgency⭐ Listener Suggestion Of The Week - Ramp - https://ramp.com/👍 Why subscribe?If you build, code, invest or care about the future of AI, startups or developer tools, this channel is for you.🔔 Tap the bell so you never miss new episodes.#coldemail #jamesgreen #venturecapital

Companies that win are the ones who master go-to-market faster than anyone else - even if it feels uncomfortable, risky or counterintuitive.Mirko Novakovic is the co-founder & CEO of Dash0 - the platform helping engineering teams ship faster by eliminating the complexity and noise around modern software observability.Before Dash0, Mirko built and scaled multiple high-growth companies. Today, he’s applying those lessons to a new category and teaching founders why revenue is the only real feedback that matters.From understanding sales math, to hiring ahead of growth, to pushing against the safety-first mindset many founders default to, Mirko breaks down why speed wins, how to be your own salesperson #1 and what it really takes to get to that first million in revenue.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:45 The sales math every founder must know03:10 Why you must hire 12 months ahead04:32 The burn + risk problem in high growth06:00 Why founders must sell early07:20 Conversations vs real revenue08:42 How to ask questions that close deals10:05 Getting to the first $1M in revenue11:32 When to hire sales and add fuel to the fire13:00 The mindset shift every technical founder needsHuge thanks to Mirko for making the time!#dash0 #mirkonovakovic

In this episode, Lukas opens up about the real story behind W&B’s $1.7B acquisition, what it was like inside early OpenAI, why most founders move far too slowly, and the surprising truth that you’re almost always earlier than you think.

Lukas breaks down how W&B became the default toolset for the world’s best ML engineers, the strategy behind seeding researchers, why platforms often fail, and the singular advantage of being “in a rush”.

He also shares lessons from Travis Kalanick, what founders consistently get wrong, and how becoming a parent changed his leadership.If you care about AI, startups, product craftsmanship or developer tools, this episode is a masterclass.

Don’t forget to subscribe 🔔

Chapters:

00:00 Intro – The gold rush of AI

01:18 From CrowdFlower to OpenAI

02:54 The insight: data beats algorithms

04:47 Joining OpenAI as an unpaid intern

07:57 The origin story of Weights & Biases

09:03 Getting the first 100 users

11:00 “You think you're late, but you're probably early”

12:56 Fundraising: CrowdFlower vs W&B

16:45 Building for builders, not platforms

17:22 Why seeding researchers made W&B win

22:10 Advice most founders get wrong

37:15 Breaking through ‘paper walls’

44:56 What it was all for

⭐ Listener Suggestion – CoreWeave - https://www.coreweave.com/

Why subscribe?If you build, code, invest or care about the future of AI, startups or developer tools, this channel is for you.

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#AI #startups #wandb #founders #machinelearning #openai

We sat down with one of the most forward-thinking leaders in modern biotech!Dr. Dan Wee is the Chief Execution Officer (CEO) at Enveda Biosciences Enveda is challenging the traditional pharma model. Instead of operating several steps removed from real patients, Dan and the team are building medicines grounded in what people actually feel, experience and need.Since Enveda’s founding at the height of the pandemic, Dan has helped guide the company through the turbulence of biotech cycles while staying focused on one mission: developing the best medicines, as fast and as safely as possible.Chapters:00:00 Intro01:05 The energy of founders + VCs01:45 What Enveda actually does02:41 Mapping life’s chemistry03:38 The first year building Enveda04:50 Founding biotech during the pandemic05:27 Staying focused through turbulent markets06:20 The gap between pharma and real patients07:14 How Enveda bridges that gap08:20 Why chronic diseases need new medicines09:12 Modernity, antibiotics, and unexpected consequences10:03 Building for patients who live with conditions dailyHuge thanks to Dan for making the time!#foundersandbuilders #danwee #slush2025