The New Build

For our Season 1 finale, we did something different: three founders, three industries, and one bet they all made independently—that mobile had to be the anchor for their business.

In this episode, host Abhinav Narain sits down for three shorter conversations with the teams behind Clover Dogs, Land, and MMARA. Julian of Clover Dogs explains why a dating-app swipe—not another shelter directory—is what finally makes rescue adoption feel joyful, and how AI now onboards a shelter's entire roster of dogs in minutes. Andrew of Land makes the case that his climate-resilience app is deliberately not a weather app, and why he traded fitness-tracker-style risk scores for a plain-language model borrowed from horoscope apps. And Obi and Onyi of MMARA share how a beauty company selling hair products became a women's health platform using hair loss as an early signal for conditions like lupus, PCOS, and thyroid dysfunction—and why they refuse to build on agentic AI that's wrong about women's health roughly 60% of the time. Across all three, the same lesson keeps surfacing: get obsessed with the problem, not your solution.

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

* https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-12-clover-dogs-land-mmara

Topics covered:

• Why mobile is the right anchor for some businesses—and genuinely wrong for others
• When the interaction model (a swipe, a daily read, a daily log) is the product
• Designing for behaviors people already do, instead of asking them to learn new ones
• Using AI on the back end to remove operational friction for non-technical partners
• Why a "pivot" is really just iteration you should be doing every day

Links:

• Clover Dogs: https://bubble.io/clover-dogs 
• Clover Dogs (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clover-dogs/id6753950948
• Julian Reeves (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/julian-reeves-a19157112/
• Land: https://land.supply
• Land (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/land-climate-tracking/id6755068546
• Andrew Haarsager (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/haarsager/
• MMARA: https://www.themmara.com
• MMARA (iOS): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mmara-my-hair-coach/id6745461031
• Obi Chukwuma (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/obianozo-chukwuma/
• Onyi Chukwuma (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/onyi-chukwuma-7baa4220/
• Start building: bubble.io

Scott Belsky has spent two decades at the center of how creative and technical work gets built, shipped, and scaled — and almost none of it followed a conventional path.

In this episode, Emmanuel Straschnov sits down with Scott Belsky — founder of Behance, longtime Chief Product Officer at Adobe, prolific angel investor in 100+ companies, and now partner at film studio A24 — to explore the frameworks he's developed across a career that spans product, entrepreneurship, and storytelling. They dig into why empathy consistently outperforms passion in building products, what the "messy middle" actually demands of founders and teams, and how Scott thinks about the AI moment from the rare vantage point of someone who has been launching AI-driven features in creative tools for over a decade.

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-11-scott-belsky

Topics covered:

• Why the focus group that almost killed Behance actually validated the entire vision
• "Empathy outperforms passion": what this means in practice for early product decisions
• The most common mistake early-stage founders make — and why Instagram's login data explains it
• The "windows blacked out" analogy for leading teams through the messy middle
• Scott's experience co-leading Adobe's product reinvention after the Behance acquisition
• Two types of creators: content creators vs. artists, and why they want completely different things from AI tools
• Why builders should design model-agnostic products in the current AI landscape
• The Ramp investment story: how "spend less" as a core principle made everything different
• What Scott actually looks for in founders — including a litmus test he uses in every pitch meeting
• Why optimism is both a founder's greatest asset and their biggest liability
• Scott's one piece of advice he wishes he'd had when starting Behance

Links:

• Scott Belsky on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/scottbelsky
• Behance: https://www.behance.net
• The Messy Middle by Scott Belsky: https://www.themessymiddle.com/
• A24: https://a24films.com
• Start building: bubble.io

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Chapters

[00:00:33] Introduction

[00:02:13] Scott's unlikely path from Goldman Sachs to entrepreneurship, and what drew him to design along the way

[00:05:45] What Behance's first (and only) focus group revealed: creatives didn't think they needed another network — and why they were wrong

[00:09:43] Common founder mistakes

[00:12:44] Defining the messy middle

[00:18:11] What it felt like to lead product inside Adobe after the Behance acquisition

[00:21:06] How builders should think about AI models

[00:24:28] Why Scott joined A24 and what excites him about new IP and risk-taking storytelling in an era of sequels

[00:31:45] What Scott looks for when investing in founders

[00:37:30] The one lesson Scott wishes he'd had at Behance: knowing when not to be a contrarian

Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup, the book that gave a generation of founders the MVP, the pivot, and the build-measure-learn cycle. He's also an early Bubble investor who believed in the democratization of building before most of Silicon Valley took it seriously.

In this episode, Emmanuel sits down with Eric to talk about his new book, Incorruptible, and the forces that quietly corrupt even the best companies. Eric introduces the concept of "financial gravity" — the structural pressure that bends successful companies away from their founding purpose — and explains why it starts pulling the moment you succeed, not after. He also makes a sharp case against vibe coding and AI-assisted building without understanding.

Topics covered:

• Why AI tools can make founders less capable, not more
• "Financial gravity": the invisible force that corrupts good companies from within
• The difference between "mission-driven" and "mission-controlled"
• Why governance is a creative design decision, not a legal formality
• How Incorruptible builds on The Lean Startup

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-10-eric-ries

Links:

• Incorruptible by Eric Ries: incorruptible.co
• Eric's podcast: ericriesshow.com
• Eric's newsletter: news.theleanstartup.com
• Eric on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/eries
• Eric on X: x.com/ericries
• AnswerAI: answer.ai

Start building: ⁠bubble.io⁠

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Chapters

[00:00:47] Introduction

[00:02:20] How AI and no-code changed the game Eric predicted 

[00:05:20] Why most people use AI wrong

[00:06:00] Dark flow: vibe coding is a slot machine 

[00:08:15] The artifact is not the progress

[00:09:30] What Incorruptible is about

[00:11:02] Financial gravity: the invisible force that corrupts good companies 

[00:13:35] The Bill Gates intern story

[00:16:23] The FedMart and Costco story: 200 years of companies losing their soul 

[00:22:45] When should founders think about governance? 

[00:24:58] The "most evil company" exercise: what your charter actually commits you to 

[00:27:01] The PBC filing: a two-page fix most founders don't know about 

[00:29:15] Mission-driven vs. mission-controlled: the Google "don't be evil" test 

[00:33:00] Does Incorruptible conflict with The Lean Startup? 

[00:35:48] Eric's blueprint: the path of ethos and the path of integrity 

[00:40:10] Is Eric optimistic? 

Most founders build software first and a business second. Clément Llehi did it the other way around — and that sequence might be exactly why Makko works.

In this episode, Abhinav sits down with Clément, the bootstrapped solo founder of Makko, a facility management company based in France. Starting with no co-founder, no outside funding, and no coding background, Clément spent his early mornings cleaning offices at 5 AM while consulting at Capgemini by day and designing what would eventually become a platform running operations for 300 employees and over 600 enterprise clients by night. He shares the moment he knew it was time to go all in, what it actually takes to earn the trust of major companies when you're a small, self-funded team, and why he restructures his company every six months on purpose.

Topics covered:

• Leaving a consulting career at Capgemini to start a cleaning company — and why people thought he was making a big mistake

• Doing the cleaning himself first, and why that changed every product decision he made

• How the pandemic forced him to pause and build the platform that now runs the whole operation

• The moment winning his first big enterprise contract made everything feel real

• What consulting taught him about user experience — and why the FM industry still hasn't caught up

• Building enterprise trust as a small, bootstrapped, founder-led team

• Why he deliberately restructures Makko every six to eight months

• How AI is changing Makko's internal operations, and what he's thinking about for clients next

• The competitor's comment that meant more to him than any client win

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-09-makko

Links:

Makko: makko.fr

Clément on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clementllehi/

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Chapters

[00:00:00] Why the early days of building Makko felt like the best and worst time of Clément's life

[00:00:22] Introducing Clément, founder and CEO of Makko

[00:02:23] Why Clément left a consulting career at Capgemini to start a cleaning company

[00:03:38] The brutal early grind: cleaning at 5 AM, working 9-5, building the platform at night

[00:05:26] Why Clément entered the industry as an operator first rather than building a platform from the outside

[00:13:36] Discovering Bubble: How Clément found no-code and built an MVP in a month during COVID

[00:15:51] From first clients to 600+ B2B accounts: What earning enterprise trust actually looked like

[00:19:06] How a consulting background gave Makko a customer experience edge in a notoriously old-school industry

[00:21:43] Overcoming skepticism: Why some people couldn't believe a tech-forward company could also be the best at cleaning

[00:24:57] Why Makko deliberately restructures every six to eight months — and what that looks like in practice

[00:31:03] Clément's playbook for building a bootstrapped business that enterprise clients can trust

[00:33:13] Knowing when to leave your day job: Why you need both traction data and gut instinct

[00:36:13] The micro signals most entrepreneurs ignore — and how one small complaint can signal a bigger cultural problem

[00:40:16] The competitor compliment that told Clément he was building something truly different

We recorded this just after Allbirds made headlines this month for selling its footwear assets, but before they announced their pivot to AI infrastructure under a new name — all roughly two years after Joey Zwillinger stepped down as CEO. He founded the company in 2015, took it public at a $4 billion valuation in 2021, then watched the stock collapse more than 96% before stepping down in March 2024. Rather than retreat, he's back—building Biologica, a women's hormonal health company, with lessons that only come from living through the full lifecycle of building, losing, and starting over.

In this episode, Emmanuel talks with Joey about what actually broke at Allbirds, why being a public company made the turnaround harder, and the specific frameworks he's applying differently the second time around. You'll hear his "slope of ignorance" hiring philosophy, why he believes "take the money and spend like you don't have it," and what advice he's giving early-stage founders today that's genuinely different from five years ago.

Topics covered:

• From biotech to footwear: Why Allbirds was always a material innovation company
• The "slope of ignorance": Hiring for competitive moats, not urgency
• Selling $1M in shoes in 30 days with zero advertising
• What broke after the $4B IPO: False signals from COVID's volatile consumer behavior
• Why the $160 Tree Flyer running shoe was a strategic mistake
• The public company trap: Quarterly reporting creating negative externalities
• Why being too small as a public company ($300M revenue) made turnarounds brutal
• Stepping down as CEO: The transition process with Joe Vernachio
• Starting Biologica with his wife Liz: Hormonal age, not chronological age
• What he's doing differently: Subscription model, lean team (6 people), research-first
• The second-time founder paradox: People assume you'll succeed (and stop giving honest feedback)
• "Spend like you don't have it": The investor advice he didn't internalize until too late
• Why the music will stop: Capital allocation in an optimistic market
• Building vs. buying technology: Why consumer companies shouldn't build their own tech

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

* ⁠https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-08-joey-zwillinger

Links:

* Biologica:

https://biologica.com

* Joey on LinkedIn: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jzwillinger

Most impact-conscious businesses treat social good as a cost center‌ — ‌something funded by profits from the "real" business. EqualReach flipped that model: When refugee talent gets paid for dignified work, EqualReach gets paid too. The mission and the revenue are structurally the same thing.

In this episode, Abhinav talks with EqualReach Founder and CEO Giselle Gonzales and Product Lead Olena Voloshyna about how they built a freelancing marketplace connecting displaced talent with businesses that need digital work‌,  ‌and why the only way EqualReach makes money is when that talent gets paid fair rates. You'll hear how 10 years of research led Giselle to identify the missing piece in refugee employment (market access, not training), why Olena went from intern to product lead in 18 months through "trust as currency," and the specific platform features that make dignified work‌ — ‌not exploitation‌ — ‌the default.

Topics covered:

• Why "dignified work" means the opposite of exploitation
• The 10-year research journey that revealed the real gap: market access, not skills
• How EqualReach's fee structure aligns incentives with refugee talent getting paid
• Building the platform during Bubble's Immerse program with zero product experience
• Why Giselle hired a product lead before having a product
• "Trust as currency": How giving ownership unlocks 90% more potential
• Smart contracting: Giving teams control over payment terms and pricing
• Impact reporting as a feature: Tracking jobs created, KPIs improved, stories told
• Why most people think "refugee" = "low-skilled person in a camp" (and how to change that)
• The compliance challenge: Perceived risk vs. actual risk for businesses
• One Young World moment: 80% of the room commits to the vision
• How a Palestinian marketing team used AI to deliver studio-quality training videos
• Starting with the "why," not the "how"

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• ⁠https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-07-equalreach

Links:

• EqualReach: http://equalreach.io
• Giselle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisellegonzales/
• Olena on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olena-amina-voloshyna-49a571113/

Matt Graham's agency RapidDev has 220 employees working on 250+ active projects. That means he sees more product launches in a month than most investors see in a year‌ — ‌and the learnings are clear.

In this episode, Emmanuel talks with Matt about what actually separates successful founders from those who stall out, why being "too smart" kills momentum, and the specific mistake that wastes the most money in early-stage development. You'll hear why Matt walked away from a company that became a $1.5B unicorn (and doesn't regret it), his thesis on why we're entering the biggest services boom in history while everyone else runs away from agencies, and the culture shift that transformed RapidDev from a two-person freelance operation to a 220-person company that grew revenue 340% in one year.

Topics covered:

• Why founders who are "too smart" and too cerebral fail more often
• The #1 mistake: Endlessly building before getting any users
• What successful founders have in common (hint: it's not intelligence)
• Why Matt left a company that became a $1.5B unicorn‌ — ‌and chose the agency path instead
• The services boom thesis: Why AI creates massive consulting demand
• How RapidDev scaled from 2 to 220 people in 5 years
• Diversification strategy: Why agencies plateau and how to avoid it
• Client work reality check: Managing expectations when things go wrong
• Why pricing is collapsing but premium services will always exist
• The AI brain monitoring every Slack message and email for escalations
• M&A as a forcing function: Why acquisitions stretch your organization
• Culture over process: How Matt is rewiring 220 people to think the same way
• The biggest bottleneck right now: Finding AI implementation consultants

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• ⁠⁠https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-06-matt-graham-rapiddev⁠

Links:

• RapidDev: http://rapidevelopers.com

• Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-graham-nocode/

• Start building: bubble.io

Sam Rudy spent over a decade booking recording studios for major artists worldwide, a job that involved sending 50+ emails just to book a single session. He had zero coding experience, but his co-founder Ricky convinced him that Sam’s deep industry knowledge made him the only person who could solve this problem.

In this episode, Abhinav talks with Sam about how he went from "this feels impossible" to building Pro Studio Time, a marketplace connecting artists with professional recording studios. You'll hear why studios don't advertise rates or availability (and how Sam designed around that), the specific moment he realized people actually wanted what he was building, and his framework for overcoming fear of failure when putting early prototypes in front of industry peers. Sam breaks down why "boring is back" in music tech, how he found early adopters willing to wait through delays, and why nobody cares about your imperfect product as much as you think they do.

Topics covered:

• Why deep industry experience creates an unfair advantage over technical skills
• The 50-email problem: How recording studio bookings actually work
• Meeting your co-founder at the pub: From complaint to company in 24 hours
• Why "this will cost $500K to build" is almost never true anymore
• Overcoming the fear that your industry peers will judge you
• Getting 130+ studios and 75+ profiles without launching publicly
• Why closed beta is often just founder fear disguised as strategy
• Finding early adopters who'll stick with you through delays
• "Boring is back": Why music tech investors want real problem-solving over cool ideas
• The iteration playbook: Most things fail because founders don't stick with it long enough

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-05-sam-rudy
  

Links:

• Pro Studio Time: prostudiotime.com
• Sam on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/amessagetourudy
• Ricky (Sam’s co-founder) on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ricky-foran-238742317/
• Start building: bubble.io

Brian Henderson's experience managing his family's laundromats revealed a technology gap across the entire industry‌ — ‌so he built a separate company to solve it. Wash-Dry-Fold POS now serves over 1,200 laundromats across all 50 states, and in 2023, Brian and his co-founder purchased the original three family stores that inspired it all.

In this episode, Abhinav talks with Brian about how he identified a desperate need at laundromat trade shows, why he spent years reselling other people's software before building his own, and the specific challenges of integrating Bubble apps with physical hardware like cash drawers, receipt printers, and washing machines. You'll hear why two competitors each spent $100K+ and failed to build what he succeeded at, his framework for deploying updates to physical locations without interrupting transactions, and why he believes we're living in a "Star Trek era" where non-coders can solve complex problems.

Topics covered:

• Why he resold other software for 3 years before building his own
• The $150K lesson: Two competitors who failed at custom development
• Building SaaS + hardware: Cash drawers, printers, and washing machines
• Deploying Bubble updates to physical locations without breaking transactions
• Starting Wash-Dry-Fold POS as a side business in 2016
• Coming full circle: Buying the family's three laundromats in 2023
• The "1,000 iterations to success" philosophy
• Solving supply chain and sales tax when shipping hardware
• Integrating with industry giants: First POS to connect with Alliance Laundry Systems' API

Find this episode’s full show notes here:
* https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-04-brian-henderson

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Links:

Learn more about Brian’s businesses:

• Wash-Dry-Fold POS: washdryfoldpos.com
• Liberty Laundry: libertylaundryok.com

Hear more about the Laundromat Ownership podcast (hosted by Brian’s co-founder Ian Gollahon): laundromat-ownership.com

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Chapters

[00:01:14] Brian introduces Wash-Dry-Fold POS and the path from family laundromat to software company

[00:04:44] Inside the laundromat trade show world: the Clean Show and a billion-dollar niche most people overlook

[00:08:28] The origin story: how Liberty Laundry launched, and the moment technology entered the picture

[00:15:54] The silo problem that inspired Wash-Dry-Fold POS — and an industry first with Alliance Laundry Systems

[00:17:25] Coming full circle: leaving the family business, founding Wash-Dry-Fold POS, and buying back the original laundromats in 2023

[00:22:56] The eureka moment: automating invoicing for one customer — and why bundling hardware and software beats letting customers choose their own setup

[00:29:40] A thousand iterations to success: why getting paying customers early always beats building the perfect product in isolation

[00:35:15] Playbook for founders: hardware logistics tips and why you don't need anyone's permission to get started

[00:39:48] Rapid fire: Bubble as a creative vs. technical tool, the waterproof shower notepad, and the mistake most new founders make

[00:42:42] The Star Trek era of building: why defining the problem clearly is the most important skill in an AI-powered world

Before he even launched the Turing app, Vai Singh grew his YouTube channel to over 45,000 subscribers in less than a year‌ — ‌while working full-time as head of strategy at a major European space services firm and raising a young daughter. The science education platform he built next proves you don't need to quit your job to build something real.

In this episode, Abhinav talks with Vai about his distribution-first strategy: why he built YouTube audience before perfecting his product, how he knew which feedback to act on versus ignore, and the specific tools (Bubble, AI, Canva) that let him operate as essentially a one-person company. You'll hear why it took 15-20 videos before anything caught on, his framework for ruthless prioritization when you have limited time, and why he believes we're not far from single-person unicorns.

Topics covered:

• Why YouTube came before the mobile app (distribution-first strategy)
• The 15-20 video threshold: What it actually takes to gain traction
• How to filter constructive criticism from noise
• Building a native mobile app on Bubble in 4 weeks during summer vacation
• Balancing full-time work, family, and entrepreneurship through automation
• Using AI to 10x output: Research, content creation, and task automation
• When "good enough to not frustrate users" beats perfect
• Why passion gives you energy instead of draining it
• The tools that make single-person companies possible

Find this episode’s full show notes here:

• https://bubble.io/blog/the-new-build-03-turing-app

Links:

• Turing App: theturingapp.com
• Vai’s favorite science lesson: https://theturingapp.com/show_index/relativity--the-special-and-the-general-theory
• Download: iOS | Android
• Start building: bubble.io

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Chapters

[00:01:26] Introduction: Meet Vai, the strategy executive building Turing App on the side

[00:02:44] The moment everything changed: How his daughter's birth triggered entrepreneurship

[00:03:36] Discovering the content gap during late-night parental leave walks

[00:05:25] Breaking free from finance's "golden handcuffs" to pursue passion

[00:07:24] Why content comes first: Using YouTube to validate before building

[00:11:00] The Special Relativity series that changed everything

[00:13:00] Four weeks to launch: Building the first version on Bubble

[00:15:00] The "not frustrating users" standard vs. perfectionist paralysis

[00:19:00] The 15-video rule: Why persistence beats perfection on YouTube

[00:21:00] Single-person unicorns: How modern tools are changing the entrepreneurship game

[00:25:10] Life-changing advice from an Afghanistan veteran with a bullet near his heart

[00:29:48] Bubble announcements & Outro