The Thread Podcast

Albert Gozzi, CEO and Co founder of Aleph joins the show to talk about. 

• The insight Albert got from his time in consulting at Bain, specifically the pain in and around FP&A (Financial Planning & Analysis), that led him to founding Aleph.
• How CEOs should be thinking about balancing "relationship building" with VCs vs. building the business. 
• The mentality of company building after closing a Series A, and balancing resource allocation across product development and growth.

Nora Jones, CEO and Co founder of Jeli, joins the show to talk about

• How Nora's experience at Jet, Netflix, and Slack led her to founding Jeli.
• Chaos engineering, quantifying the impact of burnout in an "always on" economy, and the human side of incident management.  
• Selling Jeli to PagerDuty and the process Nora went through to sell the company (when to bring in outside help)

Tracy Young, CEO and Co founder of TigerEye, joins the show to talk about

• Building Tracy's first successful company, PlanGrid, and how the Autodesk acquisition of PlanGrid led to Tracy uncovering the opportunity for her current venture, TigerEye (launching this year in 2024!)
• Tracy's decision to start another company and how she evaluated her options after her time at AutoDesk.
• Balancing family and founder responsibilities, the efficiencies gained when time is in limited supply.
• Scaling beyond boundaries, and the cost v. benefit of building a team that is in-person v. remote.
• Heightened expectations as a second time founder, learning to listen more, and a better way to build and forecast revenue.

Anna Believantseva, COO and Co founder of Esper Bionics joins the show to talk about 
- Human augmentation and using bionics and technology to extend our human potential.
- The human technology stack, and the potential of embedded hardware in humans. 
- The role of a COO at an early stage startup, B2B2C business model challenges and fundraising for a bionics, robotics, and hardware startup. 

Hedda Båverud Olsson, CEO and Co founder of Lassie, joins the show to talk about

• The Pet insurance and pet ownership space, the major insurance incumbents, and Lassie's focus on preventative veterinary practices.
• Chicken problems and how different cultures view pet ownership. 
• Hedda's experience closing out her €23M Series B round from Balderton Capital, and best practices on how to close your round efficiently.
• Hedda's experience in the music business, and how it helped her become a stronger entrepreneur.

Rachel Blank, CEO and Co founder of Allara Health, joins the show to talk about

• The evolution of women's health care and how improvements are being made through digital health.
• The importance and advantages of a "direct to consumer" health care model.
• Raising $10M from Google Ventures, balancing cash conservation with growth, and how Rachel is thinking about scaling quality of care as she grows her team.

Mike Weiland, Co founder and CEO of Govly, joins the show to talk about

• Why selling to the government is really hard and how Govly makes that easier for businesses contracting with the government.
• Raising $9.5M Series A from Insight, fundraising for a government tech startup, and the advantages of picking a more unique venture vertical that is recession proof.
• Raising the bar and challenging employees to achieve more, and how Govly did that to hit their revenue milestones ahead of raising their Series A.
• Founder/VC fit, and some of the proof points that validated that Insight was the right partner to help Govly scale its company.

Navneet Dalal, CEO and Co founder of Matic joins the show to talk about

• Being an early mover and pioneer in computer vision and deep learning.
• Moving beyond an interface and a good product to build a lasting, sustainable business.
• Being acquired by Google, working for Tony Fadell and with the Nest team, and the insight that led to Matic.
• The "human sensor stack" and how it intersects with the "robot sensor stack", and why Matic started with cleaning the floors.
• Picking an existing market and the importance of building a "minimum loveable product".

Sam Chaudhary, Co founder and CEO of ClassDojo, joins the show to talk about

• Where early stage education is falling short, and Sam's experience building the largest community for teachers, parents, and kids to thrive in the educational system. 
• The process Sam and his co founder Liam went through to unlock PM fit for ClassDojo.
• The jobs left to be solved in education, reflecting on the COVID home school experience, and how ClassDojo is expanding into the Virtual Learning Experience to solve the jobs that the classroom won't (or can't do well).

Siva Namasivayam, Co founder and CEO of Cohere Health, joins the show to talk about

• Starting companies in chaos and a family full of MDs.
• The inefficiencies that exist in the operational side of Health Care.
• Identifying early adopters and the nuances of doing that in a more conservative market like Health Care.
• Raising capital in health care and the traction you need and expectations you need to set before going out to raise capital in Health Care.