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What if the future of security is no alerts at all?
Lizzy Nammour started on a three-person data security team at Airbnb, trying to track 10 years of data that engineers kept collecting faster than anyone could map—and she built Teleskope so companies can fix data risk automatically instead of drowning in alerts.
In this episode of The Flywheel, M13 Managing Partner Karl Alomar sits down with Lizzy Nammour, founder and CEO of Teleskope. They break down why AI turned data security into an urgent problem: how assistants like Claude surface sensitive files faster than any employee could search for them, why so many DSPM tools ended up as shelfware, and why knowing about a risk you can't fix leaves you liable for it. Nammour explains why the next era of security works like a copilot, with humans always in the loop.
If you're a founder, security leader, or operator trying to understand AI data security, DSPM, or why more alerts don't make a company safer, this is your map.
⏱️ Chapters
🛡️ In this episode
About Teleskope
Teleskope finds sensitive data across a company's systems, decides what's risky in the context of the business, and fixes it automatically, so companies can adopt AI securely. Learn more at https://teleskope.ai
About M13
M13 invests early in outlier founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets. The Flywheel is where M13 talks with those founders. Learn more at https://m13.co
▶️ Subscribe
Subscribe for more conversations with the founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets, and follow The Flywheel on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
What happens when the software spending your money doesn't have an ID?
Jonathan Awad built Baselayer into the identity network one in five US financial institutions uses to verify businesses—more than $1 billion in fraud losses prevented—and he's now extending it to the AI agents those businesses deploy.
In this episode of The Flywheel, M13 Managing Partner Karl Alomar sits down with Jonathan Awad, co-founder and CEO of Baselayer, as the company announces a $35 million Series A led by M13. They break down what trust actually costs in B2B: why a bank still takes days to verify a business it can't see in person, why Meta fronting your ad spend is credit, and how fraudsters who were never sophisticated got dangerous the moment they got a model. Awad explains the transitive property behind agent identity.
If you're a founder, operator, or investor trying to understand KYB, agentic commerce, or where fraud goes next, this is your map.
⏱️ Chapters
🔐 In this episode
About Baselayer
Baselayer is the risk and identity infrastructure platform used by more than 2,300 financial institutions, Fortune 500s, and government agencies to onboard and underwrite businesses, consumers, and the agents they deploy. Learn more at https://baselayer.com
About M13
M13 invests early in outlier founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets. The Flywheel is where M13 talks with those founders. Learn more at https://m13.co
▶️ Subscribe
Subscribe for more conversations with the founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets, and follow The Flywheel on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
What if the worst year for global trade in a decade turned out to be your best year ever?
Alex Yancher built Passport into the cross-border commerce engine shipping to 150 countries for brands going international, and a year after Liberation Day, with tariffs dominating every headline, the business had its strongest year yet.
M13 Partner Brent Murri sits down with Alex Yancher, founder and CEO of Passport in this episode of The Flywheel. They break down what changed one year after Liberation Day: imports from China falling from roughly 13%–15% to 9%, the tariff inflation that never showed up, and why reshoring is still anecdote instead of data. Yancher—who closed M13's investment the week the world locked down—explains why he went asset-heavy when every board deck said asset-light, and what seven months of AI agents did to his margins. If you're a founder, operator, or investor trying to understand tariffs, cross-border commerce, or where AI is reshaping logistics, this is your map.
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 — Closing an investment while the world shut down
01:44 — March 2020: a term sheet, a lockdown, and a firm that didn't retrade
03:22 — Why Alex started Passport: surfboards, diamond rings, and the hair in cross-border
05:51 — One year after Liberation Day: what changed in global trade
07:38 — Decoupling from China, and the reshoring that hasn't happened
09:25 — The tariff inflation that never arrived
10:30 — Why the hardest year in trade was Passport's best
11:01 — Going asset-heavy when the whole market said asset-light
12:48 — Vertical integration: catching a "spring gift box" before customs does
14:26 — 37 automations, 1%–2% of margin, and a two- to three-year cost advantage
16:51 — The moat AI can't replicate: entities in 14 countries
17:57 — Free shipping or a lower price? What $1 billion in sales data says
19:51 — The white-label ceiling and the acquisition that broke it
22:32 — Cannibalizing cross-border to build in-country
📦 In this episode
About Passport
Passport helps consumer brands sell and ship internationally—logistics, duties and taxes, compliance, returns, and growth—across 150 countries. Learn more at https://passportglobal.com
About M13
M13 invests early in outlier founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets. The Flywheel is where M13 talks with those founders. Learn more at https://m13.co
▶️ Subscribe
Subscribe for more conversations with the founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets, and follow The Flywheel on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
What if "what's the fastest path to $100 million in ARR" is the wrong question entirely? Nami Baral, founder and CEO of Niural, spent two and a half years building an AI-native global payroll stack before going to market because she isn't building for $100 million, she's building for $100 billion.
M13 partner Morgan Blumberg sits down with Nami Baral, founder and CEO of Niural, where they break down why global payroll is one of the sleepiest, yet most complex markets in software and why AI agents finally made the full stack buildable. Nami—who joined Twitter pre-IPO and sold her last company to Acorns—explains how Niural built its own payroll tax engine, went live with Aetna and Guardian, and grew revenue 287% on the way to a $31 million Series B. If you're a repeat founder, an operator in a regulated industry, or an investor mapping vertical AI, this is your map.
⏱️ Chapters
00:00 — The question that isn't $100 million
00:28 — Why M13 invested in Niural
01:33 — Doing it again: from Twitter to Acorns to Niural
02:46 — Why global payroll is the sleepiest market in software
03:19 — Deel for international, ADP for domestic: the vendor sprawl problem
03:54 — Why AI agents made the full stack buildable
04:30 — Every company in the world could be a Niural client
04:45 — Two and a half years of building before go-to-market
06:32 — What it takes to build a generational company
07:35 — The fastest and sturdiest path to $100 billion in ARR
08:37 — ASO, PEO, EOR: solving payroll end to end
09:41 — AI at the DNA, not a ChatGPT wrapper
10:12 — Aetna, Guardian, Kaiser: building the benefits layer
12:18 — The Chinese bamboo
13:00 — Payroll is one form of money movement
14:52 — ADP, Oracle, and Visa combined
15:39 — From a dial-up connection in Nepal to the Common App
18:52 — Why Niural built its R&D base in Nepal
23:04 — Hard weeks, and what M13 does that capital can't
💸 In this episode
About Niural
Niural is an AI-native global payroll and payments company building a single system of record for payroll, benefits, contractor payments, and cross-border money movement across 150 countries. Learn more at https://niural.com
About M13
M13 invests early in outlier founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets. The Flywheel is where M13 talks with those founders. Learn more at https://m13.co
▶️ Subscribe
Subscribe for more conversations with the founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets, and follow The Flywheel on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
What if the most overlooked market in tech is the one every investor told you to run from? Polimorphic founder Parth Shah and M13 Managing Partner Latif Peracha explore how local governments are leapfrogging a decade of technology straight into AI and ask a bigger question: can AI reduce bureaucracy without reducing government?
Recorded live at M13's Annual General Meeting, Latif and Parth break down why off-the-shelf models score just 16% accuracy on dense government data while Polimorphic hits 99%, how AI can reduce the “time tax” of bureaucracy, and why the competitive whiteboard stayed almost entirely white. Parth launched Polimorphic in 2021 when investors said they'd rather he "have no idea than work with local government.” They’re in 30 states today, and when governments think AI, they think Polimorphic.
If you're deciding where to build, weighing whether your industry is ready to be disrupted, or studying how companies compound in slow markets, this one’s for you.
⏱️ Chapters
🏛️ In this episode
About Polimorphic
Polimorphic builds AI-powered customer service, CRM, and workflow tools that help local governments serve residents faster—from answering questions to processing permits. Learn more at https://www.polimorphic.com
About M13
M13 invests early in outlier founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets. The Flywheel is where M13 talks with those founders. Learn more at https://m13.co
▶️ Subscribe
Subscribe for more conversations with the founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets, and follow The Flywheel on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Why does calling 911 still mean a dispatcher typing your emergency by hand, word for word? Prepared co-founders Mike Chime, Neal Soni and Dylan Gleicher dropped out of Yale to rebuild the emergency call—using AI to transcribe, summarize, and translate in real time across roughly 80 million calls a year.
Prof G Markets cohost Ed Elson sits down with Mike Chime, co-founder and CEO of Prepared, and M13 Managing Partner Karl Alomar to break down what it takes to fix an overlooked problem: why the 911 call is still stuck on decades-old technology, how Prepared now works with about 1,000 agencies and touches roughly 80 million calls a year, and why solving a real problem beats chasing the hot trend.
Mike—who left Yale on a Thiel Fellowship—explains how the company went from a dorm-room school-safety app to being acquired by Axon. Karl, who scaled DigitalOcean to a $5 billion IPO before joining M13 and wrote Prepared’s first check, explains what made him back college students a year before there was a company.
If you're a founder, operator, student or engineer weighing whether to leave a safe path and build something that matters, this one's for you.
⏱️ Chapters
🚨 In this episode
About Prepared
Prepared helps 911 centers handle emergencies with AI—transcribing and summarizing calls in real time, surfacing what responders need, and translating for callers who don't speak English. Learn more at https://www.prepared911.com
About M13
M13 invests early in outlier founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets. The Flywheel is where M13 talks with those founders. Learn more at https://m13.co
▶️ Subscribe for more conversations with the founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets, and follow The Flywheel on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
What if moving $100 million across borders took 60 minutes instead of five days? OpenFX founder Prabhakar Reddy is rebuilding the world's cross-border payment rails to make real-time the default.
On this episode of The Flywheel, recorded live at M13's annual meeting in Montana, M13 Managing Partner Latif Peracha sits down with Prabhakar Reddy, co-founder and CEO of OpenFX. OpenFX is Prabhakar's fifth company. He's been a founder since 19, spent a stint as a VC at Accel, and previously built FalconX into a profitable $8 billion company where he's still a large shareholder. Now he's taking on a $2-trillion-a-day problem: moving money across borders in real time.
Prabhakar breaks down how OpenFX settles 98% of transactions in under 60 minutes, why the real competition is legacy banks and not other fintechs, and how the company grew more than 20x in a year while staying profitable with roughly 100 employees.
In this episode:
Chapters:
Follow The Flywheel on Spotify or Apple Podcasts for more conversations with the founders building at the structural shifts that create new markets. Learn more about OpenFX at openfx.com and M13 at m13.co.
What makes an AI voice worth talking to? Rime founder Lily Clifford thinks the next breakthrough in voice AI isn't a more natural-sounding voice—it's a conversation you actually want to keep having.
On this episode of The Flywheel, M13 Partner Morgan Blumberg sits down with Lily Clifford, co-founder and CEO of Rime. Before Rime, Lily was earning a linguistics PhD at Stanford, researching the acoustic physics of how humans produce speech. Lily’s since built Rime into voice AI that powers roughly 100 million phone interactions a month across healthcare and financial services, and has a clear, differentiated view of where voice goes next.
Lily breaks down why the next wave isn't a smoother-sounding voice, but conversations people don't want to hang up on and what that means for anyone building with voice right now.
In this episode:
Chapters:
Follow The Flywheel on Spotify or Apple Podcasts for more conversations with the founders building at AI's frontier.
Learn more about Rime at rime.ai and M13 at m13.co.
What comes after large language models? Skyfall AI founder Sam Pasupalak thinks the next breakthrough is AI that can run a business autonomously.
On this episode of The Flywheel, M13 Partner Morgan Blumberg sits down with Sam Pasupalak, co-founder and CEO of Skyfall AI. Before Skyfall, Sam co-founded Maluuba, one of the first deep-learning labs for natural language understanding, acquired by Microsoft in 2017. He's spent 15+ years at the frontier of AI and he has a clear, differentiated view of where it goes next.
If you're a founder, operator, or engineer trying to understand the future of AI after the LLM era, this is your map. Sam breaks down why the next wave isn't smarter co-pilots, but autonomous businesses—and what that means for anyone building right now.
In this episode:
Chapters:
00:00 — The future isn't AI co-pilots
00:40 — From Maluuba to Skyfall: who is Sam Pasupalak?
07:45 — Why Skyfall takes a different path than the LLM wrappers
09:50 — World models and continual learning, explained
19:17 — The coffee-shop test: why an LLM can't run a business
22:47 — The hot take: why AI wrapper companies will struggle
24:21 — How early we are: the Yahoos and AOLs vs. the Googles and Amazons
38:13 — Founder traits for this era: build a research-first company
39:46 — Hot takes on OpenAI, Anthropic, Altman and Amodei
48:43 — Being both a warrior and a monk
Follow The Flywheel on Spotify or Apple Podcasts for more conversations with the founders building at AI's frontier. Learn more about Skyfall AI at skyfall.ai and M13 at m13.co.
From the publisher's feed
The Flywheel is a podcast for founders, operators and investors building through structural change. M13 partners sit down with the founders reshaping AI, enterprise software, healthcare,…