Hosted by Walter Thompson · 🇺🇸 US · EN · 115 episodes
Established thought leaders with verified media credentials.
After working for years in early-stage startups and as a journalist, here are three hard truths I’ve learned:1. Success in Silicon Valley hinges on connections, hard work and luck.2. Startups often fail because founders lack fundamental business knowledge.3. Real, actionable advice comes from those who’ve actually done it.There’s no such thing as “founder DNA.” If you’re willing to take on risk and invest years of your life in something that has maybe a 10% chance of paying off — less if you’re a woman or person of color — you can be a startup founder.Here’s why I founded Fund/Build/Scale:1. To help founders make fewer mistakes.2. To share successful strategies that can accelerate your go-to-market journey.3. To inspire more people to see themselves as potential founders. There’s a lot of overlooked talent out there, and we are missing out.This podcast is for anyone who’s interested in learning the basic skills required to launch a startup, secure initial funding and transform
Walter Thompson hosts Fund/Build/Scale, a technology show with 115 episodes published.
Most technical founders can explain how their product works. Far fewer can clearly explain why a customer should care. In this episode, Cribl CMO Abby Strong shares what she has learned from building go-to-market teams a
Show notes
What does it actually mean to build an AI-native company? In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I talk with True Ventures Managing Partner Puneet Agarwal and Gather CEO/co-founder Mayank Mehta about how the startup evolve
Show notes
For this episode, I interviewed Eugene Malobrodsky, partner at One Way Ventures and former founder of AnchorFree, the company behind HotSpot Shield, one of the first consumer VPN products to scale globally. Before becomi
Show notes
A lot of early-stage founders can explain their company five different ways — and all five might be technically correct. The problem is that often, those answers don’t fully line up. That gap in a startup’s narrative cre
Show notes
Hiring is one of the hardest things for first-time founders to get right, especially if you’re building a distributed team that spans the globe. For this episode, I spoke to Isaac Saul Kassab, co-founder of Pearl Talent,
Show notes
Technical founders don’t usually struggle with what they’re building. They struggle with explaining it clearly, quickly, and in a way that makes someone want to invest. In this episode, I spoke with Sheena Jindal, Managi
Show notes
Startup employees are encouraged to believe in the mission. But IPO timelines now stretch well past a decade — and many never happen at all. In this episode, Ben Black, co-founder and managing director of Akkadian Ventur
Show notes
I interviewed Play Ventures General Partner Phylicia Koh to explore what founders outside of gaming can learn from two decades of game design. Play Ventures began as a gaming-focused VC fund. Today, it also invests in wh
Show notes
In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Sentry co-founder David Cramer joins host Walter Thompson for a candid, wide-ranging conversation about what founders actually struggle with — and why so much conventional startup adv
Show notes
Building an early-stage startup isn’t just about the technology — it’s about earning trust before the proof exists. In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, I’m joined by Jeff Smith, CEO and co-founder of 2nd Set AI, a start
Show notes
As African startups mature, the leap from seed to growth brings a new set of challenges — longer fundraising cycles, institutional expectations, governance, and the realities of scaling across fragmented markets. In this
Show notes
In this episode, I’m joined by Jon Callaghan, co-founder and managing partner at True Ventures, and Julie Bornstein — CEO and co-founder of Daydream, founder of The Yes, and former COO of Stitch Fix — to break down what
Show notes
For years, founders have been told to build a defensible moat. But in AI, where platforms, models, and capabilities can shift overnight, that advice is starting to feel outdated. In this episode of Fund/Build/Scale, Simu
Show notes
When most founders look at markets dominated by Google or Apple, they see a dead end. Ariel Seidman saw an opening. Before founding Hivemapper, Ariel helped scale Yahoo Maps during a period when search and mapping were r
Show notes
Odille Sánchez leads the Tech and Scientific-Based Entrepreneurship Center of Excellence at Tecnológico de Monterrey, where she works with hundreds of early-stage founders across Latin America. In this episode, she expla
Show notes
When you don’t have generational wealth or a built-in network, the startup path isn’t just harder — it’s different. In this episode, I’m joined by James Norman and Sean Green of Black Operator Ventures for a candid conve
Show notes
Lexi Reese has scaled companies at every stage — from building Google’s programmatic advertising business, to helping Gusto grow revenue from $10M to $300M. Now she’s co-founder and CEO of Lanai, an enterprise AI startup
Show notes
April co-founder and CEO Ben Borodach joins Fund/Build/Scale to break down how he built a compound startup in one of the hardest markets in fintech: U.S. taxes. We talk about why some problems can’t be solved with a simp
Show notes
In most industries, if you’ve got a solid idea, a few engineers, and a working prototype, you can at least get in the game. Professional sports is not one of those industries. When Jordy Leiser co-founded Jump with Alex
Show notes
Most founders think VCs want a pitch deck full of market numbers, a roadmap, and a feel-good story about the future. Hoxton Ventures Partner Payton Dobbs isn’t looking for any of that. He wants to know if you actually un
Show notesSponsor detection runs nightly. Check back soon.
No public pitch examples yet for this show.
Generate your own personalised pitchBased on semantic analysis of episode topics and host coverage, this show is a strong guest fit for executives in:
Industry fit is computed by PitchCentric using vector embeddings of the show's episode catalog.
Shows with the most semantically similar episode content. Pitch one, pitch all; producers cluster.
Fund/Build/Scale has a verified contact on file. Create a free PitchCentric account to access it and generate a personalised pitch in seconds. Research at least 3 recent episodes first and lead with a specific angle that serves their technology audience.
Fund/Build/Scale is hosted by Walter Thompson. The show is categorised under technology (news) and has published 115 episodes.
Fund/Build/Scale has published 115 episodes.
Fund/Build/Scale regularly covers technology, news. It sits in the technology category, with a news focus.
Fund/Build/Scale is accessible for guests with genuine technology expertise. A personalised, episode-aware pitch will still outperform a generic one every time.
Fund/Build/Scale hasn't explicitly signalled guest openness in recent episodes. That doesn't rule out pitching. your hook just needs to be especially compelling and relevant to their recent content.
Episodes of Fund/Build/Scale average 46 minutes. a focused format where a clear narrative arc and tight preparation matter most.
Our data rates Fund/Build/Scale's guest bar at 80/100 (Premium tier). Established thought leaders with verified media credentials. Sign in to PitchCentric to see how your own Pod Score compares against this show.
Methodology. Booking Probability™ blends Listen Score, 30-day Virality, open-to-guests detection, and Apple ratings. Data refreshed every 60 minutes. Listen Score and Booking Probability are calculated by PitchCentric. Last enriched 11 days ago.
