Founders and Empanadas

Most leaders talk about innovation. Mark Johnson actually builds for it.

In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, I sit down with Mark Johnson, Co-Founder of Michigan Software Labs, to unpack what innovation really looks like inside high-stakes teams, enterprise orgs, and day-to-day life.

We cover:

• Why the best innovation comes from crisis, not comfort

• What NASA’s Apollo 13 mission can teach you about leadership

• How to empower junior teammates to share ideas without fear

• The one exercise Mark gives every audience to spark better decision-making

• Tactical frameworks for managing AI expectations without over-engineering

• And what it actually takes to lead through chaos

If you’re building during uncertain times—or trying to evolve your team from order-takers to product thinkers—this episode delivers real strategies you can apply immediately.

📌 Timestamps:

00:00 – Origin story of Michigan Labs

03:00 – Hiring mistakes and early lessons

06:00 – Mark’s TED Talk recap: innovation, crisis, and courage

08:30 – The story behind M&Ms and building through rejection

11:00 – How to innovate in your personal life

15:00 – Empowering your team to speak up

16:30 – Getting engineers to think like product owners

18:00 – Avoiding a surveillance culture while maintaining accountability

19:30 – How AI is changing client demand and staffing

22:00 – The 10-20-70 rule for successful AI adoption

25:00 – Managing client expectations when AI becomes a buzzword

26:30 – Mental health and the agency business model

29:30 – The hardest conversation Mark’s ever had with a client

32:30 – Loneliness in agency life and lessons on resilience

36:00 – Mark’s hot take on the best way to innovate today

What do you do when you’re hogtied at gunpoint in a Brazilian penthouse? Or broke in Sri Lanka trying to make a business work from scratch?

For Evan Cassidy, those weren’t hypotheticals—they were chapter one.

In this raw and revealing episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Evan to unpack the wild, global journey that eventually led him to build Booming Brands, a white-labeled video editing agency now producing 4,000+ videos per month.

They cover:

• The violent home invasion in Brazil that changed Evan’s life

• The freelancer trap most digital founders fall into

• How to tell when a startup is failing—vs. when you’re just quitting too early

• Why founder skills don’t scale (and how to grow into a real CEO)

• A tactical system for finding product-market fit in services

• The difference between resilience and denial when chasing a vision

If you’ve ever wondered whether to keep pushing—or finally let go—this conversation will hit home.

📌 TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 – Intro + Empanadas

2:00 – Leaving corporate life for Brazil

4:30 – The home invasion story

9:30 – Faith, fear, and navigating chaos

12:00 – Moving to Sri Lanka + freelancer years

16:00 – Failed course launch + debt

17:30 – Iterating into Booming Brands

22:00 – Traits that don’t scale from founder to CEO

26:00 – Leadership mistakes that haunt you

29:00 – Picking yourself up after failure

32:00 – Final hot take: Don’t diversify too soon

🎧 Full episode available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your shows.

Is your customer support team seen as a cost center—or a strategic growth engine?

In this episode of Founders & Empanadas, Joshua Eidelman sits down with Susana De Sousa, CX advisor and former leader at Airbnb and Loom, to challenge the outdated thinking around support. They dive deep into how support teams can drive expansion revenue, reduce churn, and directly contribute to product and retention strategy.

Susana shares hard-won lessons from scaling support at hypergrowth startups, how to build automation without losing the human touch, and why CSAT might be the most misleading metric in your dashboard. She also gives tactical frameworks for tying support performance to business outcomes—and why now is the best time ever to lead a support team.

Whether you’re a founder, CX leader, or just tired of fighting for headcount, this episode will change the way you think about support.

📌 Topics Covered:

• Turning support into a revenue driver

• Support metrics that actually matter

• How AI is changing the shape of modern CX orgs

• Hiring for “multiplier effect” talent

• Voice of customer loops that influence product

🎧 Listen in and learn how to scale customer support without sacrificing quality—or your sanity.

Starting a company means embracing a strange, often uncomfortable reality: status limbo.One day, you’re managing a team, earning a solid paycheck, and working in a nice office. The next, you’re back to zero—no salary, no brand recognition, no credibility beyond your own conviction. It’s the most disorienting transition in a founder’s journey, and if you don’t learn to sit with it, it can lead to some really bad decisions.In the latest Founders & Empanadas episode, Joshua Eidelman sat down with Patrick Rafferty, co-founder of UserHub, to unpack the mental game of startup life, the role of AI in software businesses, and the often-overlooked challenge of communicating across cultures.

In this episode, Joshua Eidelman sits down with marketing powerhouse Melissa Rosenthal to discuss her journey from media disruptor at BuzzFeed to B2B marketing innovator at ClickUp. Melissa shares candid insights on applying B2C strategies to B2B marketing, building high-performing teams during hypergrowth, and her philosophy on brand building. She opens up about the emotional challenges of working 20-hour days at a rocket ship startup, her approach to hiring and managing talent, and her current venture OutLever, which turns companies into their own media publications. Don't miss Melissa's hot takes on founder mindset, including why friction causes movement and why brand means different things at different stages.TIMESTAMPS:

1:58 - From media disruption to B2B SaaS: Melissa's career journey

4:48 - Bringing B2C marketing strategies to B2B at ClickUp

7:27 - Wild stories from the early BuzzFeed days

11:16 - Scaling marketing teams while maintaining culture

15:31 - The reality of work-life balance at hypergrowth companies

19:07 - Identifying when early hires aren't right for the next phase

22:01 - The dangers of promoting great ICs to management roles

25:26 - Balancing data-driven decisions with creative intuition

29:25 - OutLever: Turning companies into their own media publications

34:05 - Why brand means different things at different stages

There's something special about sharing empanadas and diving into deep conversations about life, learning, and entrepreneurship with family. Last week, I had the joy of sitting down with Dr. Dawn Eidelman—who happens to be my mother—for an episode of Founders and Empanadas. As we talked about her incredible journey from academia to global education innovator, I couldn't help but reflect on how growing up in a family of educational entrepreneurs shaped my own view of what's possible in our interconnected world.

In this special Q&A episode, Joshua Eidelman, founder of NeoWork, answers listener questions about entrepreneurship, building global teams, and driving operational excellence across cultures.

TIMESTAMPS:0:00 Introduction

1:57 How immigrant parents shape entrepreneurial resilience

4:33 Driving performance with overseas teams in non-confrontational cultures

7:15 Essential Tagalog terms for managing Filipino teams

12:59 Operational excellence with LatAm teams

23:23 Navigating cultural differences in global leadership

26:38 Cross-cultural alignment strategies

28:09 Combating founder loneliness

29:34 Building trust between technical and non-technical teams

31:16 Balancing speed and sustainability to prevent burnout

34:19 Closing thoughts and call for more questions

Joshua shares personal insights from building NeoWork's international team, including practical tips for managing teams across the Philippines, Colombia, and other regions. Learn about cultural nuances, communication strategies, and leadership approaches that drive success in a global workforce.

As the host of Founders and Empanadas, I've had the privilege of sitting down with many entrepreneurs to explore the intersection of business and life's major milestones. My recent conversation with Devon O'Rourke, founder of Fluvio, was particularly enlightening. We dove into how becoming a new parent will change your life— but maybe not as much as you might think.Over spicy mystery-meat empanadas (which we later discovered were chicken), Devon shared how his journey into fatherhood coincided with his most successful month at Fluvio. What struck me most was his approach to preparing for paternity leave – instead of micromanaging every detail, he empowered his team with greater autonomy. This trust-based leadership not only resulted in record revenues but also demonstrated how parenthood can push us to build more resilient organizations.

From Soviet refugee to successful entrepreneur: Gene Eidelman joined his son on Founders and Empanadas to share his journey from arriving in America with $400 to building a $35M sustainable housing venture.

In this episode, we explore:

On this episode of Founders and Empanadas, I sat down with Aaron Schwartz, co-founder of Orita.ai, to discuss the often-overlooked pitfalls of fundraising. He shared counterintuitive insights that challenged my understanding of the fundraising process, and offered tips that can help anyone raise capital more quickly.